[Krawlin]

Originally Posted by suicideneil

I didnt like it at first, but now its 99% there it actually looks rather smashing

What I would do is grab some of those tiny mini hand files and give it another going over, straighten up some edges and corners etc, then polish & clear coat it; too nice to cover in paint.

I think a solid one-piece version of this machined from a block of alloy ( a la UE mono-block ) would be even more awesome

Originally Posted by JThiessen

I agree with Neil. How come you didn't try to make it out of AL? You can Plasma cut it, and you can MIG weld it.....

Just curious if you noticed if the holes were any harder to drill? Plasma cutting tends to harden the material - but since you then welded it afterwards, that may have reversed that process...

Originally Posted by Overdriven

I like it. Its not as "finished" of a piece like you'd get from milling it out of a solid chunk of AL. But thats part of the beauty of it, function over form and making do with what you got on hand.

It would be interesting to see this mount done in AL, both monoblock style, and welded up in a similar fashion to what you did. But if you don't have a spool gun for your MIG thats not possible. Although with a few more screws for the bracing, this mount could be made with no welding whatsoever. Either way, I like the enginuity and the final product. Especially the bracing.

Thanks, means alot coming from you guys.


To Neil, not sure yet if I am going to clean it up more with files, etc. Like Overdriven said, part of the cool factor is the "not perfect but very functional" finish of it, which I kind of like. However, I may polish it to a mirror finish and clear coat it, not sure yet.

To JThiessen, I didn't make it out of aluminum for a few reasons, 1 being price, not to sound like a cheapo here, but I have free access to steel at the welding shop at the community college where I take welding classes (as well as free access to the PlasmaCam CNC plasma cutter there, all of the welding machines, and all of their tools), and aluminum would have cost alot, I would have had to raise the price of the ones I wanted to sell by ALOT, and I wouldn't be able to sell any for that kind of price because RCM Mike's setup is much nicer and would probably be cheaper anyway. I do have access to a spool gun, but for the price (free to me if you don't count the cost of the welding classes), steel is just as good. Weight isn't that much of an issue in an MT anyway.

Also, I didn't notice the holes being any harder to drill, but I'm sure these have some hardening, because they were dunked in cool water right after being cut out, and I did tack welds and went from 1 area to the next when welding it, so it didn't build up very much heat from welding, probably not enough to reverse any previous hardening.

Originally Posted by rawfuls

I believe he didn't use AL or anything else because he can get the hot-rolled steel quicker, and a more.....supply at once.
Don't want to give anything away incase he doesn't want me to.

I didn't use AL because of price and even though I do have access to a spool gun, I have never welded aluminum before, so I didn't really want to try it on something like this.

Originally Posted by lincpimp

When welding material that thick with a mig (or pretty much any welding device) you will need to "V" the ends of the material where you want to weld. That way the weld penetrates the material properly. A bench grinder would do fine, just grind an angle on the piece, and weld in the V that you get when the place the ground piece against the flat piece. Looking at your welds the welder seem to be set about right for voltage, maybe lower the wire speed slightly.

Otherwise i like the result, not going to bend easily. Get good with the welds and you will not have to grind at all on them. I like a nice weld over a ground weld.

The top plate has a slight angle at the ends of the "legs" that attach to the motor plate, enough to get good weld penetration so I made sure that it did. The braces were somewhat like that, they had to be ground shorter so I put a bit more angle on them so they werent flat against the top plate and motor plate to get better weld penetration. I also tried to do a single bead and make it look nice, but I guess I am just not used to welding very small stuff yet, everything I have been doing in my welding class is 4 inch long strips (lap, t, butt, in flat, horizontal, verticle, and overhead positions), so I still need to get used to doing smaller stuff, I get all 95% grades on all of my welds for the class though, so I think I can trust my welds on this motor mount. Now if I could TIG weld, this would be a different story, I'm sure I could get a really nice bead small enough to not need grinding but still very strong if I TIG welded these. I agree though, I do prefer a nice weld bead over a ground down weld, I just haven't had the experience yet to figure out how to do a nice looking small weld bead on thicker material like this.