repair of cast iron grill frame?
 

ok guys i guess the knuckle head i got my lil 70 roller frame with the creeper drive from banged a tree at one time, and i have a hairline crack in the grill frame, question is with these being cast iron and expensive to ship if i found one for sale somewhere.

was thinking i could sand blast down and use J.B.WELD, then sand that down so you could hardly see the repair after shes painted THOUGHTS ON THIS? unless someone has a extra good frame they wanna sell me:beerchug:

I'd grind down into the crack and braze it (vertically with the crack), heat it slowly and let it cool on it's own.

JB won't hold it, it'll crack again.

Scott

not to question but ive used jb weld on car engine blocks for years and it has worked??? if im just using the tractor to put around with you think it will still crack????

there are a lot of ways you can repair your grill frame if you have a mig welder you can V groove out your crack drill a small hole right at the end of the crack and then weld it with mild wire it will work fine.I had a welding engineer tell me this many years ago I have a blacksmiths forge I got for scrap because it had a crack over 2 feet long from freezing water, I ground out the crack and mig welded it it's now close to 10 years since I did it and I have had no problems with it.I have done a lot of cast iron repairs over the years and would not think that mig works but it does and it works well.I have repaired several broken exhaust manifolds by mig welding and none of those have failed either.

If you have yours off the machine, weigh it and measure it then go to the USPS website and check to see how much actual shipping would be from a zip code some place far away from where you live. That way you will at least know if you're getting screwed on shipping.

Then put an add here in the classified section, surely someone here has a good 70/100 grill shell that they would sell cheap, also watch epay, sometimes grill shells don't bring much there.

Someone welded the grill shel on one of my 70's it seems to be holding ok, it's just kinda ugly.

Seems I recall something about pre-heating cast iron before welding. Can you shed some light on that, Leon?

Cast iron needs to be preheated and then cooled slowly after welding. A bet of hot sand would probably work good. If it cools too quickly, it will crack everywhere. BTDT.

Heat it slowly with a rosebud and then braze, and as I stated in the first post allow to cool slowly. Cost very little to accomplish and a no brainer.

Find a local welder to do it if you can't, local guy to me will charge $20.

And yes as other's have stated if the crack is not complete drill a 1/8th" hole at the end point of the crack and fill with braze. This will permently stop the crack.

Scott

Also if you are going to mig you still must preheat, do not attempt without preheat. If you are good at brazing you will have little to grind out unlike a mig weld you will not have to build up the weld.

Scott

Last observation-

You cannot make any kind of a repair to a casting and not have it noticed. If you want to make the repair invisible you'll need to resurface the entire casting, there are ways to do this and it will take some time and effort.

OR-

I looked around and most want $35 shipping, you will likely buy one for $5 to $10 plus shipping.....is all this really worth the effort if you don't have the tools and knowhow?

$45 seems worth it to me.

Scott