20 year old oxford mig 170, is it worth £300

[icedillon]

Hi All,

Looking for a solid state mig machine and have been offered oxford mig 170, although I don't have any pictures, I have been told it is cream and green in colour (so must be quite old as new ones are black and green). The owner has also told me that it weighs around 60-80kg and needs 4 people to lift it!!

Can that be true? He said he won't take anything less tahn £300 as taht's what the scrap man offfered him as he knew it was full of copper. He said it is really good for thin sheet metal welding which also suits me but not sure if I can justify £300 for it.

Ice

 

[brightspark]

Hi All,

Looking for a solid state mig machine and have been offered oxford mig 170, although I don't have any pictures, I have been told it is cream and green in colour (so must be quite old as new ones are black and green). The owner has also told me that it weighs around 60-80kg and needs 4 people to lift it!!

Can that be true? He said he won't take anything less tahn £300 as taht's what the scrap man offfered him as he knew it was full of copper. He said it is really good for thin sheet metal welding which also suits me but not sure if I can justify £300 for it.

Ice

dunno about the welder but there isnt 300 quids worth of copper in it thats ******. scrap men offer u bu ,,.,.er all

 

[rtbcomp]

It won't be far off - I got over £6.00 per kilo a while back for copper.

 

[gavuk]

My mate bought an oxford ,mid 80's good welder,think they were £400-500 new...a lot back then ....not sure i'd pay £300 for a 20year old machine though,compare it against a new clarke with warranty seems steep .....what do you want to weld?

 

[icedillon]

Will be welding body panels upto 5mm I would think, I might go and have a look at, but yeah is a bit steep but really like the old copper stuff built to last!

 

[keith19]

Have a look on ebay for price comparisons. There's about 3 or 4 on there at present, around £100 - £200 ish. Also google for farm auctions and farm sales, where they can sometimes be picked up for under £100. If you do a general search you will find a guy who does refurbished ones with a warranty. He charges around £300 up, but always checks/changes the oil, which is very expensive.

 

[icedillon]

Have a look on ebay for price comparisons. There's about 3 or 4 on there at present, around £100 - £200 ish. Also google for farm auctions and farm sales, where they can sometimes be picked up for under £100. If you do a general search you will find a guy who does refurbished ones with a warranty. He charges around £300 up, but always checks/changes the oil, which is very expensive.

Oh right, any sites in particular, had a google with refurbished wleders but didn't come up with much

 

[keith19]

Apart from ebay, Westermans usually have a selection in:

http://www.westermans.com/lincolnwelding.aspx

always worth a look.

The guy who does refurbs I mentioned above only does Oxford oil-filled arc welders, my mistake!!!

 

[Wedg1e]

I have an '80s Oxford MIG 120s, was green and off-white, maybe from the same series as that 170A. Even had a sticker on the front saying something like Design Council Award for Innovation!

Heavy copper transformer, simple electronics, spot-weld timer, Euro-torch and can take a full-size gas bottle.
Cost me... nothing! Nada. Zip. Zilch. The bro of a mate used to work for a hire company and it was taken off their hire fleet with a fault they couldn't fix.
Mate kept it in his shed for a few years, intending to have a look at it, then got sick of tripping over it and told me to take it away.
Took ten minutes and a £2 relay to fix and has worked soundly ever since. I fitted a cooling fan under the transformer and you can run full-power welds till Shergar comes home. I hung a clamp meter on it and it'll actually hit 130A despite the model name! Without a bottle I can just lift it in and out of the van by myself.

Your 170A one might not be worth £300 but it'd definitely be worth having.