gonna give it a go to weld this ear back on. stock power so... figure it should be ok. planning to use a flat bar stock and sand paper to smooth the surface after welding.
i haver not done much AL welding. i have an ac tig

 

Double bevel both the piece and the case.

Clean the crap out of it.

Heat (mapp torch will work) the workpiece and the area of the case you are working on to 400*f or so, and watch the oils burn out.

The part will also be preheated. Tack it on. 5356 filler rod.

Weld a root pass on both sides.

Clean it up with a stainless wire brush.

Weld a second pass on both sides. Limit your bead width to 1/4”. It is better to run a tight root, then 2 passes side by side to fill the groove, than to try to jam in all the rod at once and cool the workpiece down too much, leading to cracking. Brush your weld after each pass to clean it up.


Make sure you wrap the ends of your weld on the flat face of the case, because you are grinding this back.


Peen the weld while cooling to help stress relieve it and to prevent too much shrinkage (which will lead to cracking)

Once it’s cooled, grind back the weld on the flange of the transfer case flush with the existing flange. If you are careful, you can either finish with a file if you’re **** about it being flat, or just grind it to where it’s flat with a straightedge and your eyecrometers.

Enjoy the fruits of your labor.

 

[Kool, thanks. I get to use my fancy welder I bought last year. That's a good thought to preheat. I don't think I would have done that otherwise

 

How did you break that chunk out in the first place ???

 

I'm not used to working on cars. I was pulling the engine and missed that bolt. The whole engine was caked and covered with debris, I couldn't find most of the bolts, I had to pick around **** just to clean it enough to get a socket on most of them.

The picture you see after I spent quite a bit of time cleaning the things out.

I knew I might have missed a bolt so when I was picking things up with my hoist I was kind of feeling for it but that piece just came off like it was paper. I'm used to working on diesels, everything's bigger and a hell of a lot easier to tell if you've missed a bolt.

This will be my first gasser rebuild.