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Old 09-24-2018, 07:44 PM
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heinke heinke is offline
MetalShaper of the Month Jan 2018
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Prescott, AZ
Posts: 487
Post Fuel tank construction (Part 4)

156 tack welds and 224 inches of TIG welds. That’s what it took to weld together the 3 sheet metal pieces that make up the Miura fuel tank, all this welding to get a fuel tank that holds about 17.5 gallons of gas. This fuel tank is by far the single biggest aluminum thing I’ve TIG welded together to-date. The good news is that I’m much better at TIG welding aluminum now than before. The not so good news is that I’ve found several “pin hole” leaks in testing the tank with water.

Let me start here by going back to where I left off with the bead roller with a bad motor. The industrial grade motor upgrade arrived and Mittler Brothers did a great job in keeping the motor swap simple. I just had to undo 2 bolts and the old motor and its electronics slipped of the bead roller. The new motor and its electronics were pre-assembled and attached to the bead roller with the same 2 bolts. It only took about 15 minutes to swap out the motor and here’s the bead roller with the new industrial grade motor installed.



This motor has some real grunt and no more worries about stalling out the motor when pressing in a deep bead. I can also run it real slow with the combination of variable control and foot pedal.

Ok, back to welding the fuel tank. While tacking, I found the metal to warp and move unless it was securely clamped in place. I ended up using a bunch of bar clamps to keep the sheet metal edges in place while tacking them together. Here it is in pictures.







… and finally the welded tank.



I still need to fix the pin holes but the fuel tank fabrication is just about done.
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