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1st off this truck is just a winter/trash haulin beater truck. I noticed a crack on the frame at the passenger side front and wanted to know that can be repaired? Most body shop won't touch it ''liability ". If it can, what would be the cheapest route?
The hole only needs to be slightly wider than the crack. Then you'll want to take a grinder and clean the rust and scale off around the crack, take it down to shiny clean steel. When you can get a good look at everything, take your grinder again and vee out the crack (grind a vee notch down the entire length of the crack) and then you can weld it with the process of your choice. Including MIG.
Vee notch is where you grind along the crack so that if you were to cut that section of the frame out and look at it from one end, the crack would look like a V. Not sure how else to explain it...
+1 on the above. One more step after welding. Grind your weld down then plate over your weld and weld it on with welds running diagonal to the first weld. This what we have done for years on larger trucks. This is what we do when we extend the frames.
You don't use sheet metal (thickness measured by gauge) to plate a frame, you use plate steel (thickness measured in fractions of an inch) to do that job. You'll want to use at least 3/16" thick steel, you could go up to 1/4" if you wanted and can weld it.
As for grade, plain carbon steel is fine. The frame material is nothing special.
Ok cool, would a cheap welder work or does it need to be pricey?
As long as your welder has enough @ss to do the job, the rest of it depends on your welding skills. For example if you had a cheap MIG welder and an expensive MIG welder, both rated for the same output, the more expensive one will likely have a more stable arc and smoother wire feed than a cheap one but a person with decent welding skills could probably do a satisfactory job even with the cheaper one. Really depends on how good of a welder you are.
I welded my frame with a good name brand but slightly underpowered (for the job) welder and it's been fine for years even though I've wheeled it hard off road at times.
Frame Crack Repair?
