- Thread starter zedhead
- Start date
stuvy
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- 9,304
if your cleaning up any spatter its ok but i wouldnt fettle with roll cage joints or something i relied on. Out of interest what would need to smooth down?
Smoothing/blending out welds (and sharp edges/corners etc) can actually make the part 'stronger' with regards to fatigue life as surface discontinuities are stress risers. Obviously there's more than a few caveats... go too far and you end up with a local reduction in material thickness (not good) in conjunction with a fresh stress riser- that bump you've just turned into a notch
I'd kind of second guessed that for stuff like a fuel tank it's okay (kind of a necessity if an alloy tank isn't going to double its weight thanks to filler), but I was wondering with regards to visible areas of motorcycle frame... not anything of mine, but a friend's project. It has both original factory welds and new ones undertaken by a Lloyds coded welder. I suggested that the factory one should be left and that it'd be the new ones that may be able to be cleaned up...
BrokenBiker
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- Newport, South Wales
if they look like good welds, i'd leave them alone, you deffinately dont want a weld failing on a motorbike. i know a guy that had the welds on his subframe snap on a fazer1000, test afterwards proved it was the welds that failed, and made a hell of mess of him when he went bouncing donw the road
