Portable Welding kit

[GUEEY]

Looking into buying or making a portable welding kit to take away on club trips.
Over the years we have had broken suspension parts, steering part , roofracks ETC.
and on Cup weekend one of the guys broke the steering drag link at the tie rod.
lucky we werent far from dargo were we had it repaired.
i want to build up a kit so we can do emergency repairs in the bush.

any advise on the gear required or were to buy would be great.

Regards

Grant.

[v840]

two batteries (hooked in conjunction), some welding rods, and a mask should see you out of a fix.

[zagan]

one of those piranra hand gasless mig welder's could be decent.

They run off a battery.

500gram spools are only $10 or $20 max at hardware stores.

depends on what's easier for you to use stick or gasless mig. most people will find the mig to be easier at least.

[matthewK]

unsure where but there is an arc welder that connect to ya alternator or somthing along them lines

[mule75]

you would be suprised how well two or three batteries jumper leads and arc rods work.

[steel]

I remember reading about a comercially available set up a good 10 years ago. It utilised a second alternator. It got a good write up.

[ofr57]

when i start competing in comps I'm most likly going to get a portable mig

[zagan]

I suppose if you have the cash or wanted a proper deal.

You'd be looking at stick, this way air/wind/oxygen doesn't effect the weld at all, but you would need to be able to do a decent weld with a stick welder in the first place otherwise it's pointless, as it won't hold for **** basicly.

The other is a gasless MIG setup, basicly the same deal as stick, but you simply use gasless wire, you set it up like a stick welder, but you don't need to keep fitting up new arc sticks.

A proper setup if you didn't care about cash would be a stick welder with an engine bolted onto it, but your looking at $5,000+ for an el cheapie and I don't think that's what you had in mind at least.

You could other wise sus out a good inverter and then sus out a light duty stick/gasless mig setup to run off that.

Maybe you could sus out a DC stick welder as well, that way you shouldn't need an inverter at all.

[bru21]

stick welders are dc (output side).

whats the inverter for? welders are low voltage high current dc exactly what 2 batteries are why make it into 240v ac just to convert it back. also an inverter to run a welder would cost many many thousands!

batteries and jumper leads are plenty good enough, unless you plan on building a buggy chassis in the scrub, or chainging your wheelbase to suit the terrain!

[james feeney]

Was at a big event a couple of weeks ago and the Panhard rod bust off another truck in the team. We left them be and carried on but it was ages before the mobile welder got to them.

So, what exactly does it take to weld in the bush with just the truck batteries. Size of leads, max size of rods etc..........

Cheers

JF