Chassis repairs/ welding KW125

"What they dont know -wont hurt them"......if you tell the Transport the chassis has been altered ,then youre in for a major drama..........my theory is to do the alteration so its not visible from six inches away......in other words ....flange curvature exact match,all flat surfaces exact alignments,no visible grinding track down the rail or flange.......Its a bit like cracks in a Hendrickson beam.....spots of grease from the tailshaft carefully placed ,and the inspectors dont notice them ,cause they are not looking.

Went looking for Cam's post about stretching the chassis on his 700 series Dodge, couldn't find it. Is he still active on the forum?? Dave_64

Interesting about a 'welded chassis'. Lorry is an older style beavertail with a cut and welded chassis just behind the rear spring mounts. Now I have been warned about not letting him run out of full NSW rego as I would have to have it engineered to get it back on full rego. Then the only other rego is Club when he comes of age but he will hold his value more with full rego because of the welded chassis.

Dave, I think the thread you are looking for was in BigCam's Diamond/White resto. This link gets you to where he start cutting the chassis up. www.hcvc.com.au/forum/restore/1613-diamond-reo?start=80#17481

I don't think Cam has been on here for a couple of years. I seen him around on Facebook though so he is still involved in the old truck scene.

Many thanks, Scout.

Linz1607, Just because Kenworth Don't recommend It , Doesn't mean It's unsafe (or Illegal) to Do.
I know of several Kenworths that have had Chassis extensions (& see one on an almost Daily basis) that have been without Issues. Provided good engineering Practice is employed!
if you want some light reading Google VSB6 & have a read of the Chassis section.

i see you up near Newcastle. see if you can find a Business that Builds truck Bodies ect & ask them. They would be playing with this type of stuff on an almost daily basis..!

if you want to have a Crack at It yourself.
& it would seem that you (& your Mates) are capable of Doing it. Nevco in Sydney will be able to fold up & supply the Rails Inserts & Cross members (in Kit form) in fact they are big suppliers to the Truck body building Industry. If you're going to use a Stick Welder Make sure you use a Low Hydrogen Rod. I use WIA 16TC's When I do chassis Welding.. I believe All Mig Wire is Low hydrogen s ono need to worry there.

As You will be only repairing /Replacing a damaged Section & not Altering anything (wheel base ect) I agree with JohnK. go to a bit of Trouble prepping the Welded area & repaint the Whole chassis . as John Said "What they Don't know won't hurt them" I see that, the Truck is a '80 Model & I assume will be on Club Rego..

Feel free to Pm Me if you wish..

if the chassis is an alloy steel ,I would use one of the higher tensile rods .....I used to use the Lincoln 8018 C3 rod ,which IIRC is a 3%nickle rod.......it welds very nicely out of position.

Thanks Hayseed, and others John K this was the commonsense approach i was looking for, and will follow, i know my limitations , thats why ill get a better welder than me to do the final joint.
I will give you a holler when i get it in the shed , and get into it. at the moment its a new purchase, cant the cab up (pump being stripped) assume some shit under the check valve) then i can get the chassis number, etc and post some pics soon.

Thanks for the help.

Only reason I asked is that a lot of earlier chassis were really not much better than mild steel. They seem to drill very easily at least
Dave

wrote:

Cam (who is well qualified to do so) did a post on here a while back on stretching his Dodge 700 series and talked about merits of straight vs slanted cuts and how to go about welding.

Yes Cam would be the most experienced person I know of that does this, day in day out as his business and from what I know is extremely successful

I have personally spoken with Cam at length about this and as far as I know he has never had a fail of any sort

It is all in the preparation and the weld according to Cam

Remember Cam has done many hundreds of chassis stretches so he knows more about this than most likely the rest of us put together

I believe the stickers first became a common fitment on chassis is Australia after brand new International harvester trucks, lots of them went to a body builder to have new fire tenders fitted for I believe the Victorian CFA and the body builder welded the the tenders to the chassis and cracking occurred as a result, I have been told fire trucks broke in half on the street when been delivered

I doubt this was the case but just added over the years to sound better

So I'm guessing in the early 70's IH went to a higher tensile chassis

A huge court case resulted with lots of finger pointing and as a result any thing with a high tensile chassis had sticker stuck on it

Sorry way off topic sort of

Paul