How To Weld On A Fuel Tank

what's up guys it's Jeff Ray feature guest host here with world.com and on today's episode we're going to be showing you how to weld on a fuel cell so let's get at it [Music] the customer wants to repurpose this tank and put it back in the hole of their boat but first we're going to remove all the oxidation so this thing is clean but we got to remember this had fuel in it at one point so we got to take into consideration when welding on it that the fuel Vapors are not in there before we get to welding on the fuel cell here we're going to get the surface material prep I'm going to go ahead and clean off this coating that they got here with the 3M paint stripper wheel I prefer this over a flap disc or a hard disk especially on the aluminum because that will actually embed impurities into the base metal which I don't want so I like to use this wheel I've got some of the spots already knocked down with this I got a spot here I still got to do and then we're going to take it to the rotary file or a burbit and get the oxidation actually ground out of there so [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] we got these spots cleaned down now with the paint stripper wheel I'm going to throw the burbit in here this is a high speed drill I don't have an air tank with the capacity to keep up with my die grinder so I'm just going to tuck it in here and we'll get the oxidation ground out of here [Applause] thank you so what we're trying to accomplish here is removing all the oxidation out of here with the burbit you can see all the white oxidation in the material there we're going to grind that out once you start to grind it it may look like it's all out of there but I'm going to show you the difference once I start grinding on it what that actually looks like because you can distinctly see a difference between the the white gray in the material of the aluminum and then the shiny gray of the good base material in the aluminum so once you start grinding it down you'll start to see that so we're going to grind into this one a little bit more it's pretty pitted there so it's going to need quite a bit more than this little one here foreign how silver this spot is then you can see the gray in this spot that still has the oxidation in there you can see when it really cleans up you can tell the difference that all that oxidation is out of there this is going to really make the weld pool really clean if you don't get all that oxidation out of there you'll see it clear as day in that puddle there yeah you just have to push the wire in there it'll push it out hopefully bring it to the surface but we're going to get it all ground out as much as possible make for a cleaner better weld you can see here this dust is real white that's the oxidation until I start seeing that silver aluminum base material coming out of there I know there's still oxidation in there like I said it could be a little deceitful after you grind the surface off but it can still penetrate down in there so you got to make sure you get all of that out we got this all prepped now now we're ready for the next step the welding process before we go just welding on the fuel cell here we need to ensure there's no residual fuel or fuel Vapors inside the tank this tank has been out of the boat for a number of weeks now already and we've already taken a hose and flushed this thing out to ensure that there's no fuel left in the tank from what I smell I don't smell any fuel it just smells like water in there but to be safe we're going to add some water in here and put some dry ice in here what this is going to do is create a chemical reaction that creates CO2 gases carbon dioxide and what that's going to do is fill the inside of the tank okay with the CO2 rather than oxygen for combustion you'll need three things you need a fuel source ignition source and oxygen by removing the fuel and the oxygen out of here it leaves no possibility for combustion so what we're going to do is we're going to put some water in here we're going to break up some dry ice which as well is more cost effective than buying gases and trying to fill this it cost me about 15 bucks for the 10 pound block of dry ice and that's why we use this and give it a few minutes make sure there's no Oxygen left in here we're going to go ahead get that going then we'll be ready to weld so let's get at it now time for the dry ice so we have our dry ice here first thing I want to note is gloves always take safety precaution when handling dry ice this stuff is super cold and will give you freeze burn always wear gloves safety glasses as well as this stuff can cause Suffocation because it is a gas that we're releasing we have both garage doors open so that allows any gases to escape out of the building so we don't have to worry about suffocation in this building here it's well ventilated foreign so that noise that you hear is actually the dry ice melting just from the warmth of this surface here it's not even that it's hot it's ambient it's about 80 degrees outside but that's how cold this stuff is even with the gloves on I can really tell I have to be careful you can see it's getting pretty cold there already foreign up to about here because this is the only hole or vent point in this so from here up it has actually got oxygen in it so what I'm going to do is lay it on the bottom and let some of the oxygen push out of here essentially we're purging this thing out just like we would be doing on a piece of stainless steel tubing we're going to flip it on its back give it a few minutes then we'll flip it back over so I can weld the bottom side as you can see now that I got it laid flat on its back it's able to purge out the rest of that oxygen you can actually see some of the carbon dioxide Vapors coming out of there we'll give this a few minutes and then we'll get set up make some welds so now we're ready to make a weld we're ready to fix our fuel cell we took all the proper precautionary measures to ensure that we don't have combustion here with the fuel fuel Vapors and uh we got our material prep I'm utilizing the Everlast power TIG 210 EXT we're going to be running AC I've got the machine set at 135 amps with about a three second post flow on there and we're utilizing the foot pedal E3 332 tungsten I got a straight collet on here put some 40 43 332 filler wire we're just going to go through here and start filling up everywhere I ground out all that oxidation and then uh yeah get this thing sent over get it recoated they can put this thing back in the hole of their boat [Music] [Applause] [Applause] thank you it's welding great so far not too trashy at all see a little Distortion there but it's no big deal [Music] [Music] one thing I want to note just be sure to watch out for your fish eyes this is a tank we don't want it to leak fuel after they are going to have this thing pressure tested and checked once over twice over before they put it down in the hole because this thing will get glassed into the hole there so we want to ensure there's no leaks so just be cautious yeah we're almost done throw another piece of wire at it here should have this spot complete oh yeah well it turned out pretty clean like I said material prep is everything and as you can see we're still here this thing didn't explode on us so we took the right precautionary measures when working on a fuel cell and evacuating any Oxygen or fuel Vapors left in the cell so we don't have combustion and go boom I've used this method a couple of times before it's worked great for me so hope it'll work great for you guys too let us know in the comments down below of some of your experiences maybe fixing fuel cells or building fuel cells in some precautionary measures you may take as well thanks for watching we'll see you next time foreign

Channel: Weld.com

Views: 36,259

Keywords: weld, welddotcom, welding, welder, how to weld, mig, tig, welding and fabrication, welding resources, pipe, welding education, welding community, weldapp, weld.com, welding for beginners, welding tips and tricks, welding machine, welding projects, welding aluminum, welderup, welding table, weld aicha, weldtube, welding techniques, welding cast iron, welding stainless steel, welding for begginers, welding tips adn tricks, welding maching, welding marching, welding matching

Id: rfKJ9J_y-8Y

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022