Anything welding

There is nothing wrong with checking out College Welding Classes .

Though more then likely insurance would not allow hot work on vehicles.

In many places working on a vehicle might not be practical.

If your in a college welding course you have time under the hood in High school.

Good luck!

 

I've seen people turn grade 8 nuts down on a lathe but doesn't this just anneal the meal when you weld it?

 

Hmmm good point. That wouldn't help much to start with them if they ended up being mid-strength steel when you're done, unless like me you just had them laying around.

I like yellow zinc chromate plated hardware because it's corrosion resistant even if I don't need a high strength fastener such as regular nuts that get replaced with stover / lock nuts on final assembly. Since grade 8 is almost always zinc coated and not much more than grade 5 I usually have a lot on hand as McMaster is 15 min from my place and I buy 15-25 for the price of a handful if purchased from a hardware or home improvement place.

 

i'm learning welding on the job--building dump trucks and similar. a big part is welding the dump bodies to the chassis. i made it clear to my boss that i was self-taught 'youtube university' trained with a flux core only when they hired me--so just using a mig welder is a change. he's been slowly pushing me improve my skills with different tasks.

in talking to him about my limited welding experience and the most recent project he wanted me to take on, he started laughing and said "almost everyone we've hired in the past with college welding training/certification has rarely worked out. most colleges teach welding in a nice enclosed ventilation booth, and in very comfortable positions. welding while putting together a dump truck, in an open shop, with overhead doors open for ventilation, it's anything but in a comfortable position, and the wind swirling the welding gas. you'll do fine, can't do much worse than those 'certified' welders"

so no, i wouldn't suggest a college for welding stuff, i doubt they'd even allow it.

 

Interesting to hear.
Sounds like dealerships. Usually on a crew of 30 techs, only one went to UTI.
He installed the brake pads backwards.

 

Welding is only 10% of the actual job if you read what I posted above; you're not just asking to get a part welded.

You're wanting other parts cut and removed, permanently. Then said area needs to be prepped followed by some welding out of position for install of the new parts.

 

honestly, it sounds like your expectations are somewhat skewed. passion, and mechanical knowledge is a very different thing from school learning.

i went through an electronics program(EST, Electronics Systems Technician), actually got a full scholarship for the program based on my personal passion projects before applying. i've got 2 brothers that both went to UTI. all of us placed top in our classes.

the thing is, none of us placed top in our classes because of our school abilities. i'm horrific at 'school'. a 'C-' was pretty good for me up until tech school.

schools don't teach skills. none of them do. schools teach processes, and highlight the rules. it's formulaic in an unformulaic world. i, or my brothers didn't excel at any of these courses because we were good students. we excelled at them because we all share a passion and a mechanical understanding that many people just simply don't have. schools just simply can't teach passion or a mechanical understanding.

sorry, it just irritates me with this constant "everyone's an idiot until they pay money to a school" mantra.

my brothers, even i, don't install brake pads backwards. it's not a school thing. it's a mechanical understanding thing. most dealers won't hire people that don't have connections, or technical school training. my family lacked connections, which is how my brothers ended up going to UTI. but their work ethic, and career advancement since, has very little with where they went to school.

 

Damn, you hit it on the head.

I went to welding school, and actually made Dean's list.

Even got certified in SMAW and MIG, but as others that have watched my progress (I've posted it all here as well as in another thread) I picked it up really fast.

Mainly from just having an understanding (and skillset) in other areas of expertise.

Few others on the other hand ended up dropping out.

 

To me school teaches the basics . This held true in all the areas I had formal classes for.

I learned far more in the field from the older guys that had 10 or 15 years in the trade.

Nothing in school allows you to experience putting a floor in a garbage Truck.

I never excelled in other then tech classes and Math because I was bored to tears.

I was lucky I had math teachers that worked with me giving me problems with real world applications then that was before the dinosaurs . I could not picture many teachers doing that in these days.

 

Bodywork experts:

I'm doing a manual tranny and manual transfer case swap on my 2nd gen DCLB. With that requires cutting a pretty big hole in the tranny tunnel of the body. I've been trying to use all-Toyota parts and trying to do slow, methodical, quality work up til this point. I'll be using an FJ Cruiser double stick inner shifter boot.

As you can see, the issue is that the tranny tunnel on auto trucks has multiple layers right here and isn't flat so the shifter boot frame doesn't sit level and doesn't/won't seal as intended.











I still need to do some clean up but with the various layers and spot welds in places, it's not easy to separate so the shifter boot frame still doesn't sit level. There are a couple spots I ended up plasma cutting some pinholes in to the lower panel and will need to spot weld those anyway.

My question is: should I spot weld the seams and add some filler pieces so the shifter boot frame fits more level or just hit it with RTV/seam sealer and call it good? I'm trying to do a quality/professional looking job and want the shifter boot to seal as intended so wondering what y'all think? I'm not worried about the work/time frame involved so long as it's right but only am setup with MIG.

 

My vote is for the seam sealer.

As long as all raw metal edges are rust proofed/painted, I'd seal it up and move on.

 

Because the stock shifter boots are long gone last manual swap I did I used two universal generic shifter boots.

Ran a bead of silicone and screwed them down.

 

I lucked out getting a new FJ Cruiser double boot from McGeorge (part number: 58280-35320). It was pricey and is usually marked discontinued so I really want to get this right.

 

i would add filler pieces. seam sealer cracks over the long term. but honestly, it'd be mostly for the challenge of creating them.

 

it's funny, today work had a company lunch meeting about earnings/efficiency/profit stuff.

after all the official stuff, we started talking about peoples mechanical aptitude, and some past employee's that didn't work out so well.

the boss brought up how they just recently started having any mechanic/truck builder applicants build a small lego vehicle (200 pieces, age 5-12 kit) as part of the application process--they're given the complete box, with instructions. zero curve-balls for this. they just tell the applicants to follow the instructions and build the vehicle. very simple. their thought process is that if applicants can't follow instructions designed for a 5 year old to piece together a small lego kit, they'll never be able to follow the work order as specified to build the trucks as the customer wants.

the boss had one of the office ladies build it first for a baseline-- 22 minutes. he said they've had 3 applicants go through this new process. 2 have failed. 1 was left alone for a full hour, and only had the pieces scattered on the table, frozen, staring into the instructions. another was 1.5 hours in, and didn't make it past 1/3 completion of the vehicle.

 

I wanted to "like" your post, but the fact that the post hits the nail on the head depresses me.

 

Been working on fabricating some cyclone discharge chutes recently. Got to test out the Harbor Freight Icon Floodlight, this thing is amazing. The light output and beam spread is phenomenal. It's only on the second brightness setting in the photo. Also the hardface plate inside the chute is high in chromium and the layer beneath it is mild steel. Very impressive how it magnetized through it. 1/4" on 1/4" hardfaced plate for reference.

 

yep. this timeline sucks.

 

Exactly, friggin sad.

 

Community? Haha