Over the last couple of days, I've been going to town with my pneumatic scaler (man, that thing is great) to knock all the rust off the frame.
That thing is fairly aggressive and discovered a bad spot (small hole and rot) in the frame head totalling about the size of a quarter, right where the master cylinder is. (I suspect the PO must have had a brake fluid leak and didn't clean up properly).
Could I patch a hole like this by cleaning the area up, cutting out the rot and welding a panel to it? I could cut a hole in the bottom framehead plate to gain access to the inside of the head, weld a repair in and close the hole back up. The I'd weld another repair panel on the outside as well.
Or would it be advisable to replace the frame head? If so, would you have any good suggestions or sites to help me do this? The way I figure it is that I bolt a sheet of plywood to frame and jig/shim my current framehead. Then cut the old framehead out and put the new one in its place -- since everything is shimmed and jigged, it should all work out ok, right? I only have a Lincoln 135plus so would most likely have this work done by a pro-welder buddy of mine.
Remco