Does anyone see a problem with butt welding frame body mounts rather than just welding on top. Thinking about metal fatigue,cracks from stress. If I do weld on top front mount had 3 shims on each side no problem just remove 2 back mounts both sides have 0 shims.
Man that frame is CLEAN !
How much do you think you lost on the rear ones ? about 30% ? If it was mine i would add weld (slowly , small areas over time , to avoid buckling ) into the corroded area and grind it down smooth , then add the plate underneath for extra strength..
Your weld joints look like fillet welds - not butt welds. Do you understand the difference between a butt weld and a fillet weld with correct weld joint design?
Lars
AWS/ASME Welding Certifier
I would clamp the patch in place -
scribe the frame mount using the patch
then while clamped scribe the hole in the patch from the bottom. -
Center drill the patch with a pilot hole
cut the old metal from the mount - bevel the patch and the mount ear -
clamp into position -
Spot into place and then alternate from side to side with 1/4-3/8" beads not overheating any one place.
Use the pilot hole to hole saw the correct size hole in the patch.
The bevel will be filled with weld and stronger than the surrounding metal.
You should have a certified welder give you instruction and guide you in some practice. I see lack of penetration and LOF in those welds. Weld reinforcement meets no spec requirement. Smack that with a big-*** hammer, or bend it, and it will come apart.
I hesitated posting from the start, because I saw this going wrong from the beginning. I believe the people are actually trying to help you. Your welds don't look good. Whether you want to live with them or not, that's up to you. What I see in the body bolt cage weld Is cold lap. You don't have any penetration into the base metals and the weld is rolling over on the base metals. That is not going to hold much load. Does it fail, I don't know. It will depend on how it gets loaded, but it is a bad weld. If I loaded that component (ie hit it with a hammer) the first thing that would fail is the weld and (by design) it shouldn't be.
Where you plated the bracket is an issue also. You used a thin flat plate. GM designed a convoluted shape for the top of that bracket. Convoluted shapes resist bending. The flat plate won't hold much load in bending. GM spend extra money to put convolutions in that top piece so it didn’t bend. It would have been much cheaper for GM to use it flat plate like you did, but my suspicion is that would not have carried the design loads.
You have a ton of inclusions in the flat plate weld. Likely not going to hurt anything. But it occurred because you probably didn't clean the area well or you welded over slag. That weld doesn't have to carry much if any load, so it probably doesn't fail.
Now it gets interesting. What did you do with the section of the bracket you were trying to repair? Did you leave it in? Are you going to pull the flat plate Into it when you tighten the Bolt? You are going to have more deflection with your design than the original had, regardless of what you did with the pitted section. Is that OK? I don't know, but it isn't as it was intended and is much flimsier than the original design in a fifty+/- year old car that you are probably putting a bigger engine in.
Personally, I don't care if you use Elmer’s glue to fix this, but you should know what you're up against if you do. You asked a question, people gave you an answer you didn’t like, so they must be wrong! Or maybe not???
