Wheel splicing

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

Neatly done!

[steven mandell]

Thank-you.
I did spend an extra day getting the puzzle pieces to fit together within a couple of hair's widths before welding.
Could have saved many hours by having a horizontal band saw make guillotine  like initial conservative cuts.
If I had brought it somewhere to have this done, much of my fretting with probably more than a thousand visual checks between tweaks with a grinder, then files, and finally sandpaper, should likely be replaced by simply machining of the pieces by holding up to my 12" sanding disk, until the outer edges of the fill in piece matched the width of the cut off flat of the recipient wheel .

The heavy duty, small footplate mini C clamps were also very necessary to be able to pinch the 2 pieces together at a diagonal pulling vector essential to keeping the parts both stable and correctly aligned for marking the cut of the minor piece that would be otherwise quite tricky to achieve.

Similarly, having a welding magnet placed on the major piece, as close as possible to the minor piece allowed,  its magnetism to spread through the major wheel section, and thus pull the minor piece exactly at its edge.
 I had to combine the directional pull of gravity with this magnetically induced vector, as the total of the forces were just barely up to the task of achieving the ultimately critical pre weld alignment.

[Peel replica, Steve Fisk]

Mate your only welding to bits of metal together just use these clamps next time might save you a whole load of typing

[steven mandell]

Thanks for the tip.
Haven't seen one those before.
What are they called, and where are they sold?
Nothing else shown in picture for me to judge scale of size from.
Have you tried clamping the radiused double curvature of an 8" or smaller wheel to itself with one of these yet?
If so, does it work better / easier than a welding magnet for this purpose?  Difficult for me to assess usefulness without having a set to do some hands on with.

Here is how the welded side ended looking at the end of a partial day 3 spent priming , sanding and painting.
Haven't yet discussed or shown the other side of the story.  That is the other face of the wheel that was well rusted, but not yet missing in action, and therefore judged not to be requiring a transplant.
But that's another (uglier) story for another day.😂

[plas man]

buyer beware ! , that is if said car ever comes on the market , Joe Soap happily tooting down the road in his 'new' pride and joy - next thing the wheel come's off  !!!

[steven mandell]

gosh - I was hoping that we was going to get a count down on how to weld/bodge a bent/rusty wheel then getting it looking like new !

Happy to disappoint your hope to see a bodge.
I wouldn't suggest this type of repair to anyone incapable of doing quality work.

BTW,  -  How do you propose that repairing a perimeter section of a wheel could make the whole wheel fall off?

[Peel replica, Steve Fisk]

As long as there was a small gap between metals left before welding , so when the welds are cleaned up its one solid lump again rather than weld on top of two bits of metal then grind weld off (no weld left just looks pretty) but you will find out soon as it's got decent psi in it and it will look like abit of a wobble , it won't fall off though , good effort to the man that that gives something ago

[plas man]

BTW,  -  How do you propose that repairing a perimeter section of a wheel could make the whole wheel fall off?

that was a figure of speech , how many times do they say '' the engine's blown up'' , and its still in the car in one piece .

[steven mandell]

Thanks Steve.
I did remember your pointer about leaving a small gap, or alternatively beveling the edges of the parts to be welded to promote full penetration of the weld from a college class in welding that I took many decades ago.
However my desire not to weld in a wobble inducing twist or out of round change in diameter, combined with the original thinness of the wheel parts allowed me to try welding from the inside first without these edge treatments.

I was fully prepared to have go back over the welds from the front face of the wheel afterwards.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that  in the unavoidable small gaps that remained prior to my first pass, I could clearly see that the weld had fully penetrated to within a couple of hair's width of the original front face of the wheel, if not overflowed it by about the same amount.  This is discernable in the shiny area of the picture that I previously posted.  The deviation was so slight as to allow the void to be filled by just a couple of coats of primer, with sanding betwixt the spray sessions .
So that fact, plus the generous bead that now lays on top of the inside surface of the wheel, should make for a strength factor at least on par with its original.

In addition, I laid in some brazing in the lower sections of the bead, as well as along its edges, so as to both avoid areas of stress concentration, as well as make fitment of a tube, without creating any points of undue friction possible.

If you paid close attention you would see that the donor wheel was a split rim that requires a tube, whereas the recipient wheel is a tubeless type.  Having my choice of either configuration, I will give it a try without a tube first.

BTW,-  I did do a common sence stress test.   I beat the wheel with a wooden 2 x 4 about as hard as I could expect a wheel to withstand without worry of bending an original all along its perimeter.  No deflections noted.
I also tried this with a metal hammer to the point of being just shy of denting or bending it.
I got a nice even ring tone all round.

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

Mate your only welding to bits of metal together just use these clamps next time might save you a whole load of typing

Try this link Steven
http://www.amazon.com/Sealey-Butt-Welding-Clamp-Set/dp/B00K1UOJNI/179-0924395-1504260?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

[steven mandell]

Description simply reads 1.4" x 5.5" x 9.1"- yet none of these dimensions look to be attributable on the basis of their proportion when compared to the photograph.
No clarification of method of action, comments or questions answered regarding its use.
I'm afraid that I am still in the dark about this item.

[richard]

I commented recently on a different topic , logbooks , thank yous go a long way I find . If someone has gone to the trouble to look up a link , or in my case look up all my old logbooks , then I do feel the least I would expect would be a word of thanks . On this point I do hope to have not failed 😉

[Big Al]

I am going nuts. Why did I read that as log tables. No wonder I had to go back and start again. But then I did not know Weddall Seals had buttocks weighing exactly 9.9 ounces.

Announcer  'Its all very confusing. Hurrumph'!  -  After the Goons Show.

Having not helped at all, it must be time to go.

[Peel replica, Steve Fisk]

I will get a picture of mine in use, I thought they look quite self explanatory

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

Description simply reads 1.4" x 5.5" x 9.1"- yet none of these dimensions look to be attributable on the basis of their proportion when compared to the photograph.
No clarification of method of action, comments or questions answered regarding its use.
I'm afraid that I am still in the dark about this item.

I did forget how useless Amazon are on most things including techincal details - those are the dimensions of something, possibly the packet. Try these links from the Sealey website

http://www.sealey.co.uk/pdfs/instructions/AK6805.pdf

http://www.sealey.co.uk/PLPageBuilder.asp?gotonode=ViewProduct&method=mViewProduct&productid=17111&productdescription=&category=17&catgroup=263&catmicrogroup=1118&analysiscode=&requiredresults=16