Disposable gas bottles - how long can I expect.

I recently bought a 1997 Nissan Micra, only to discover that the rear sills inner and outer were rusted away. The mot station basically informed me that a welder would charge me about twice as much as I had paid for the car to do the job, so I was left with the choice of either scrapping it or getting a mig and having a go myself.

I've just bought a second hand Cebora Pocket Turbo 130 off eBay and have been having a practice on some scraps. I bought a bottle of Argon/CO2 mix , but it has lasted about 6" of practice before running out! I can't believe this is right. It cost me about £12 - at this rate to do the welding I need to do will cost me more than the car is worth in gas! The regulator doesn't have a pressure guage on it and I got nothing out of the torch without opening it all the way. Am I doing something wrong or are these bottles actually just a rip off?

What can I do? I have seen machines converted to run on pub gas, but will this also cost an arm and a leg to do? The whole reason I am doing this myself is because we are really short of money and I am beginning to wish I had never started started.

bigweeve said:

Am I doing something wrong or are these bottles actually just a rip off?

Click to expand...

No and yes!

Expect to get about 10 mins of actual welding out of a disposable and the reg needs to be fully open.
6" seems a bit short to me so maybe you've got a gas leak somewhere.
Cheapest is pub gas at about £12-£15 per fill once you've got your own cylinder.
You also need a regulator and connection kit like this.

Welcome to the forum.

Yes those small bottles are a rip off.

You'd be better biting the bullet and getting a pub-sized bottle of gas from a welding gas supplier. Plain CO2 would be the best value for money and you'd be certain of getting the proper gas rather than a CO2/N2 mix you might get from a pub.

This is what you need to do the conversion

http://www.weldequip.com/co2-conversion-kit.htm

Thanks for the info. Is there a big difference in ease of welding between argon/co2 mix and pub gas?

Judging by my first attempts I am going to need quite a bit of practice

The CO2 disposables last about 5 times as long. Still expensive, but better.

A pub CO2 bottle will last you for years.

I was using disposables when I first got my Cebora 130 and had mixed experience. None of them lasted long and I had one that seemed to last about two minutes! Difficult to argue the case with the supplier when the only evidence you have is an empty bottle.
I got onto the Volkszone offer - Excellent !!

On the plus side, all the empty bottles went into making chimneys for gas bottle stoves.