> what would be considered 1/4 material on a Truck

My bumpers! Even on my little BII I put a 6 x 3 x 1/4 bumper on the front, really helps if you slide off a trail and hit a little tree. Most larger Ford trucks have 3/16 frames and the step bumpers have a frame where the ball mounts that is 1/4 steel in case you ever want to weld anything to it. Brackets for rear bumpers are usually 1/4 steel too.

1/4 welding really helps on broken exhaust manifolds and broken steering boxes/frames too.

 

Tig welding is the way to go for smaller items. You have more control and you can weld all kinds of stock. Also cleaner
Ned

 

Just my $.02 here. I have been welding for 30 years and used nothing but an arc welder until about a year ago when I bought a Hobart 135 wire feed from a friend who wanted a Hobart 175. I thought I could use it for sheet metal and smaller projects. I was right it does great on 1/8 inch or less although I have welded 3/16 with little problems. I love this little thing but as I do a lot of heavy equipment welding I need the arc. I also have oxy/act of course.

If you watched American Choppers you may have seen the show where they needed to arc weld their trailer back together on the road. It seemed no one knew how to arc weld so Pauly Jr said he would. He had a hard time as most everything they do is tig. He did figure it out though.

My advice is pick up a Hobart 135 or larger first and then pick up an arc unit. You can sometimes find arc welders really cheap from someone who thought they wanted to learn

You will also need oxy/act set. With the combination of these three units you can build just about anything.

 

Here's the deal...if you want the best looking welds AND flexibility of working with many types of metal you'll use a TIG. My guess is that you're on a budget and want to DO-IT-YOURSELF...those buzz-box stick add-ons are difficult to strike/keep an arc going. Trust me one this one...ANY cheap welder will minimize your results by definition. An experienced welder may be able to get somewhat consistant results with one of these, but YOU won't.
Besides, I would stay away from anything that uses a flux coating or core...even the cheaper Lincoln SP's that you can get at HomeDepot. The reason being that you have to completely remove left over flux in order to paint the area you've repaired. This is the reason most bodymen use MIG instead of brazing these days.
My recommendation is that you use a 110V MIG like the Lincoln SP125 I'm using with a mixed shield gas (not straight CO2). Why? This model has variable settings controls unlike other brands, many of which have stepped controls which don't allow fine tuning of heat range/wire speed. If you can't afford this then by all means rent one or buy one with the help of several car-nut buddies and co-op its use. Someone already has said that buying cheap welding equipment leads to bad results and dislike of welding and they are SO right.
If you are going to weld heavy guage metal such as frame members you may want to leave that to someone with more welding experience. A cheap buzz-box works adequate for this. Also consider that a 220V MIG with flux cored wire will weld anything you will likely encounter in CarLand...you'll just have to chip off the flux.

 

Heavy gauge steel is perfect for a lincoln AC225

 

well i recently bought the lincoln 3200 wire feed @ the home depot for $450 it uses flux core or gas w/solid wire i got it just to do body repairs on the 89 eb full size ,,,,,,the flux core wire worked fine , i just dont like the look of the flux core welds maybe its me ha ha,,,,but with the argon/co2 and solid wire the welds were perfect

 

One note about the .30 flux wire. With the HH135 I burnt right through the new exhaust pipe tubing at its lowest setting and a good stick out. I never did that using .023 wire and gas on my Snap-On. Unfortunately the extra tips with the HH135 were all .030, so I could not use my wire and gas. I really should have waited until I bought new tips.

So, if you are buying it to do exhaust, get the tips and use gas.

 

I just welded a piece the other day using .023 with a .030 tip. It was an emergency measure and still worked.