Floyd Brothers 70 Challenger

[Stu]

Says it’s good for 5mm thick mild steel, but intention is for learning and fabricating brackets and the suchlike for now. Once I’ve got the hang of that, I’ll see if I need anything else or if that will do me.

[Dave999]

i found my cheap MIG to be a pain in the backside to learn on.
would not feed in a consitant way at all, making it an absolute misery to use
it needs to feed wire pretty instantly and keep feeding at the same rate.
this one most certainly didn't and wouldn't and couldn't ever have as far as i could tell. new wire new rollers new tesnion spring the bore and size of every aspect checked....

couldn't really complain, it was £20 at the swapmeet for a clean, complete, totally undamaged, hardly used unit, and he saw me coming...
It is a SIP, some of their stuff is great some NOT SO, seems to be a wide gulf between professional and not, but the same or very similar unit is sold and branded by a million others... i'd guess the previous owner didn't get on with it either.

I'll cut to the chase... replacing the nylon torch liner with a metal torch liner turned a bit of a lame duck into something quite useful that you can actually learn to weld with. can now set the feed rollers to a light tension and the feed is mainly predicatble and consistently what you set it at.
5 today is 5 tomorrow previously 5 today would be 1 tomrrow or everything would be zero depending on the angle you stood at and if it was after lunch.

not saying you will have the same issue but if you do you will only have to buy 1 part to fix it...

That torch apart from its "corporate" colour, looks very familiar

PS my welding is awful but at least i now enjoy it,
...I find stick/MMA easier

Dave

[Stu]

I’ll keep you posted, Dave. Cheers for the hack if it plays up!

As I’m putting parts back on, I’m trying to get them as tidy and fresh as possible. Having some trouble with the windscreen trim, it has some really odd marks on it.

Not sure how well the photos show it, but it’s almost like grease / oil marks and polishing isn’t gifting them at all. They aren’t surface scuffs, more like it’s stained somehow, so didn’t want to bowl straight in with the wet and dry, but anyone had any success / experience with this sort of stain?

[Blue]

It is stained, aluminium trim is clear anodised to stop it corroding. As far as I know it won’t clean up, you have to sand or polish the anodising away and have the trim anodised again. You can leave it bare but you’ll be forever polishing it to keep it shiny. On my car I cleaned it up as best I could and left it at that. Looks fine a 5 yards…

[mygasser]

i've polished various metals and painted them with 2k clear lacquer. then just treat them as a painted part and polish them
neil.

[Stu]

Ok, ta. Will see what I can do with it the.

Back to looking at wiring harnesses and connectors now. Was hoping to find some repop connectors somewhere for ease of swapping over, but no joy yet.

I’ve decided to rebuild the harness myself, but being an electrical thicko, I’ve no idea what gauges of wire to order.

I’ve got a full colour wiring diagram, but no idea how to figure out the gauges! Any helpful advice out there? Don’t want to be responsible for it burning to the ground!

[ScottyDave]

This might help Stu, I rounded up to the next size of wire when making my looms.

Screenshot_20230518_192718_Adobe Acrobat.jpg (63.59 KiB) Viewed 815 times

[Stu]

Cheers Dave.

[Pete]

I did the same as Dave and rounded up.

You can get nearly a 1v drop over the length of the car if there are bad earths and the gauge is too small..

[Stu]

Righto…

As slow reassembly takes place, I have questions that the diagrams don’t show.

Wiper motor needs refurbing before refitting, so was going to give it a clean and a quick slosh of black before putting it back on, but it’s a bit unclear what gaskets etc should be on there. There is what looks like a foam insert that’s been painted over for a start, can’t see any separate parts for these anywhere and don’t fancy paying for a new unit, anyone any ideas?

Also a couple of rubber seals that look brittle. Anyone know if these are available separately? Getting tied in google knots…

[Stu]

And the next question.

I appear to have *ahem* “misplaced” the clips for these little panels. Anyone got a pic of the correct clips, please, so I can search my stash!? Doesn’t seem to be covered in the manual.

Also, should they be sealed at all, or just clipped in?

Ta!

[Stu]

Sideways pics again.

[Pete]

They are held in with tiny self tapping bolts, not clips....

[Stu]

Aha, cheers Pete. That’s good news, I have shed loads of those.

[Pete]

Aha, cheers Pete. That’s good news, I have shed loads of those.

... but would they keep a "Rivet Counter" happy???