Cracked housing

[Whatswrong]

I need some guidance please .My son has a Oliver 550 utility tractor .The housing cracked where the pinion shaft goes through the bearing to transmission .It broke out two small wedges where the bolt galley /bearing housing cover attaches to the main housing .
This will be a difficult position to get at ,I can use an old Lincoln buzzbox or a pto driven dc welder .My only experience would be with 7018 and low heat ,I hate both ,any suggestions will be appreciated .
We contemplated using longer bolts and JB weld as a choice .
Thanks for now.

 

[Soundguy]

jb weld? seriously?

find a rod suitable for cast iron and use whatever it wants ( ac/dc ).

you will have a problem with oil contaminated metal.. some clean then torch it.

you may have a problem with cooling and cracking.

all depends onthe metal makup, skill nad luck, plus how bad the damage is.

 

[Stimw]

Need to figure out if it is cast iron or cast steel.

 

[ThomasH]

I need some guidance please .My son has a Oliver 550 utility tractor .The housing cracked where the pinion shaft goes through the bearing to transmission .It broke out two small wedges where the bolt galley /bearing housing cover attaches to the main housing .
This will be a difficult position to get at ,I can use an old Lincoln buzzbox or a pto driven dc welder .My only experience would be with 7018 and low heat ,I hate both ,any suggestions will be appreciated .
We contemplated using longer bolts and JB weld as a choice .
Thanks for now.

I would be thinking along the lines of brazing the repair. It will mean removing any seals or bearings in the immediate area, cleaning it as best as you can, plenty of heat to cook out soaked in oil contaminates, sanding the area and peices lightly to get to clean metal as much as you can, fluxing, holding the pieces in place, brazing them, and *slowly* letting it cool.

It may be best, if you aren't familiar with this kind of repair, to take the tractor to a repair shop that does cast iron repair.

 

[Soundguy]

Need to figure out if it is cast iron or cast steel.

Bet on a diffy bearing carrier area in the center housing being ci.

There are plenty of old tractor parts that are indeed vs, but that's an unlikely candidate.

 

[Arc weld]

Brazing is a good choice BUT you'd pretty much have to take it completely apart because you'd need to heat it to about 1200 deg's. Eutectic and I'm sure others have rods for cast iron that use what they call a cold welding process where you weld just a bit at a time, peen a little and then weld a bit more after it cools. That said, I don't think it's a repair for a beginner and is worth having someone with cast iron experience repair. The last thing you want is to have break it again even worse and be a bigger job to fix the second time.

 

[yomax4]

Harris Welco used to have a rod called 14FC. It was a Nickel,Silver,Bronze. This stuff flowed like honey and you could braze cast iron overhead. very cool stuff. For what you are doing there is no combustion pressure or extreme heat so regular low fuming bronze ( brazing Rod ) would be inexpensive. There are other things out there like Crack Sealer. It's a crayon looking thing that was designed to seal cracks in cast after they were welded. Heat a little, rub it into the crack and it seals. Not sure what the vibration would to it.. If torch work is ok, I would spray powder it. Or Kastweld 111 with flux. Lastly, there are a bunch of products that are a step or 2 up from JB Weld. Still epoxy based but newer technology. 3M has several advanced ones. Good Luck..

 

[Soundguy]

i'd never trust it in a million years glued together...

 

[Sodo]

JBweld could hold oil in, but if its force that broke it, and that same force will occur again, then it's is going to break the JBweld. What do you think caused the crack?

A pic would help.

 

[Whatswrong]

JBweld could hold oil in, but if its force that broke it, and that same force will occur again, then it's is going to break the JBweld. What do you think caused the crack?

A pic would help.

Hard to get a picture that will show much .
I BELIEVE he was stuck in a snow bank with a rotary plow for weight on the back ,tire chains for more traction and about 300lbs of shot on the front for weight so in the process of rocking to get unstuck he exceeded some torque limits.

 

[firemanmike69]

I have used a product called " lock n stitch" to repair cast iron where welding would be impractical

 

[Reverser]

I agree with the others about JB Weld. I've seen it hold on some things and not for others. I wouldn't trust it for your application. If it doesn't work then you have to grind every bit of it out to repair it right. The things I've seen it work on, have been repairs with little stress and no flex to it.

I did see it work with an old Jubilee tractor I had one time, though. After I bought it, I noticed a wavy spot on the side of the engine at the water jacket area, and thought it had been repaired with welding or brazing. But my uncle looked at it and said it had been repaired with JB Weld. He said it would probably hold fine since the water jacket broke where the water had frozen at one time, and wasn't under much stress. I never trusted it, but it was still holding up when I sold it 10 years later.

I've never had much luck with JB Weld, but maybe it's just me.

 

[Whatswrong]

We had a go at welding it today ,a friend gave us a couple nickel rods but they worked so poorly for me I gave up after 1/2 a rod .The top seam was the only easy ones to get at .We ended up using Eutectic 80T-AC+ rods they worked reasonable considering how dreadful the location of the other seams were .We preheated it with a propane torch until it was quite hot then we peened the welds with the chipping hammer so will have to wait see how we make out .
I bought these rods from a shop in Montana the owner said those are almost all he sells to his farmer customers for all purpose rods. I find them slightly harder to strike than 7014 but 7014 would have been totally useless for this.