Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild
Glad you liked it.
The only thing they flog that I am not keen on is the cobolt blue lens for alloy. I found it too dark so I bought one of Kent's ( the Tin Man ) you beaut lenses and have never looked back
https://www.tinmantech.com/products/safety-products/eye-protection/TM2000-high-accuracy-gas-welding-lens.php.
Now if you want to weld like a pro in a weekend, book in for one of Kent's workshop weekends.
I put a friend onto Kent a long while ago expecting him to buy some of the how to videos but he decided to book a holiday for the family and went to long workshop.
Back in OZ he started making Stainless Steel petrol tanks for motorcycles, tossed in his job and is now hand making body panels for the V8 supercar racers ( local production series ).
Back to the welding gear, it took nearly 10 years before I hooked up the cutting torch and I rarely used it , Took quite a while to get used to watching the cut & not the flame, now I have 2 torches, one set up for cutting, the other for welding.
I use old rusty fence wire as filler rod for most welds and on mower decks all I do is a quick wire brush to knock off the the caked on dirt & grass which stinks when it starts to bake.
For alloy most times ( when i am not showing off ) I use TIG rods but I have welded using broken pieces of old mower bases.
A local brand Victa did a 24" commercial push mower which has a cast base using what I think is a high zinc Aluminium alloy which I could never weld with a commercial filler rod but lumps of old deck works well.
Note , the demo bloke wore no gloves & neither do I, there is no slpatter , no acid flux to clean off , just some FeO ( mill scale ) which if oiled dosen't rust for ages.
Kohler Kracks is a design flaw with come of the Kohler castings on Courage singles where the top cover bolts vibrate looses then a crack forms in the crankcase from the exhaust cam all the way down the side of the barrel.
I can lay a bead on a Kohler case but have never been able to complete a weld on the crack good enough that I could charge a customer for.
you can get it TIGed but you have to strip it down to the short block, have it ultrasonically cleaned, welded then reassembled which comes out more expensive than replacing the engine.
If you follow the link to Kent's site, troll around it, lots of helpful videos on it and lots of gear that would go well in your shed. but it will cost you a lot of dinners out wearing new dresses & shoes.
His torch actually works better than the Dillion for welding but does not cut.
Dillion invented the torch, but down here CIG was the major retailer of Oxy welding gear & they also also were the only gas supplier thus a torch that uses next to no gas was never going to fly so he went broke.
Henrob was a marketing company that bought the torch off Dillion and it was sold as a Henrob for years.
Cobra actually make it so they all finally got together to form DHC
