Hi everybody

[rickoty]

Hi, everybody.

I've been wanting to learn to weld for ages now and I finally got myself a welder. A second hand clarke 155 T, just waiting for it to arrive.

I once made a horrible mess of arc welding steel reinforcements for concrete at a mates farm but thats as far as my welding experience goes, so you can expect a lot of questions and photos of my attempts over the coming months!

Will mostly be car welding (I have a couple of "wrecks") but knowing me it'll all get out of hand!

I missed out on the local welding course at college by 3 weeks so I'm glad I've found what appears to be a really friendly forum.

Rick

 

[malcolm]

Welcome to the forum - and a Clarke 155T! Mine is exactly the same. It's been good to me and put up with lots of use and abuse over the last 13 years. Do you have the manual? Mine has gone missing and there were a couple of things I wanted to check.

The only really nasty thing about them is if you over tighten the wire feed tensioner the mounting for the plastic bit holding the top wheel bends. The top wheel (idler) moves further and further outboard and eventually misses the wire. All the newer Clarkes seem to have a knurled pattern in the bottom wheel which seems to make the wire feed actually work. Good news is they are interchangeable with the old ones. I'm planning to put in an order with the expensive Machine Mart spares place unless it turns out all welders have the same size and I can go somewhere cheaper.

Which make of wrecks do you have? The Clarke is very good at Renaults

 

[rickoty]

Thanks Malcolm.

I don't know if I have the manual, I doubt it but I'll let you know on friday, when I get it. I'll keep that in mind about the tensioner, when I actually work out what it all is. Like I say, complete newbie!

I have three wrecks currently, a pug 205 which needs the bulkhead welded. A corolla AE92 which needs the corner of a door and the tailgate repaired. And a mk 2 golf that isn't rotten anywhere as far as I know!

And I'm planning on turning an old petrol lawn mower into a makeshift generator so I'll need to weld up some kind of support for an alternator.

Roll on the weekend so I can get all the necessary bits together and hopefully start practising!

I'll need some gas, I'm planning on getting a little bottle from halfords to start with then moving up to a BOC/pub bottle when I get the chance. I've ordered a couple of welding guantlets from ebay and I used to have an old welding mask in the garage or I'll borrow one untill I get a new/suitable one.

Untill then I'll be reading all I can on this forum and I have the haynes welding manual on pdf which I've been reading over. (I would be more than happy to make this available if it's within forum guidelines?)

Rick

 

[malcolm]

Probably best not to post the Haynes manual on the forum - the guys that wrote it spent time doing it, so it's best if the rest of us reward their efforts by buying the book in the shops.

I've found my Clarke 155T manual - it was sitting in the wire compartment of my welder! It doesn't have a lot of useful stuff in it, but I'd be happy to send a copy if you need one. Sure Clarke won't mind as they've already sold you a welder.

 

[rickoty]

Probably best not to post the Haynes manual on the forum - the guys that wrote it spent time doing it, so it's best if the rest of us reward their efforts by buying the book in the shops.

How very grown up.

I've found my Clarke 155T manual - it was sitting in the wire compartment of my welder! It doesn't have a lot of useful stuff in it, but I'd be happy to send a copy if you need one. Sure Clarke won't mind as they've already sold you a welder.

That would be handy mate, appreciate all the help I can get.

 

[malcolm]

How very grown up.

I haven't grown up yet! But I'm really sensitive on the copyright issue. If someone writes a useful book and lots of people buy it maybe they'll maybe write an even more useful book. That's why we have to buy the book if we like it. Otherwise we won't get any more books!

For Clarke on the other hand - they sell welders not owners manuals, so I'm sure they won't mind me loading the manual for the Clarke 155T and 170T onto the internet. My feeling is their secondhand values will increase with manual availability.

Here it is (5MB - sorry - it'll take a while to open) Clarke 155T and 170 manual (pdf).

 

[Toyoden]

Hey Rickoty

G'day Rickoty, only advice I could give, being a newbie as well, is when you buy a mask , buy an Auto Shade, no more whiplash trying to drop the mask when you are ready to weld, also an Ebay item, I am into restoring cars too, trying to anyway, got a paying job here now, am a backyarder, and he knows it, saw my Hilux that I restored and thought not bad, and said go ahead, when they pass it at the Local Road traffic inspection, will proceed to do the finishing touches like Body filler to get the surface smooth for painting.
Oh yeh, get good at filling holes lol, just kidding, but it does pay to know how to, when and if you do.
Cheers
Waz

 

[rickoty]

I managed to borrow a self-tinting mask for the weekend, WOW!!! what a diference. It's made it so much easier! I can see what I'm doing now, my welds have increased ten-fold!

I will definitely be investing in a decent mask as soon as I can.