MGB: Okay, how about Moving on to Brazing?

It seems you don't hear much about brazing. I remember brazing some holes shut on the body several years ago. Actually I filled the holes from my luggage rack on my trunk lid back in 2007 before repainting. I played it all by ear. Maybe there are some fine points about brazing that should be brought to the forefront?

Buy a copy of "How to weld damn near anything". Generally a great read, although you might end up going deeper into the technology with other tomes.

Brazing, and I am certain;y no expert, is something akin to gluing things together, as opposed to gas welding wherein the two adjacent materials are actually melted and caused to flow one into the other.

The general idea is to open up the "pores" of the adjacent metals with heat and allow the brass to flow between and into the two surfaces. As with glue, the thinner the bonding material the better. Cleanliness and flux are of supreme importance. Sort of like sweat soldering.

Jack

Peter. Nice rig you have there.

I did a lot of brazing on my first MGB, a 1970 back in 1978. Since then I bought a MIG welder and took one of Carl Heideman's classes on MGB body restoration. Now I'm into plug and butt welding (sounds a bit kinky).

With my brazing skills, the sheet metal had a tendency to buckle with the heat, then the bronze would fill up all the buckled bits leaving a lumpy mess that had to be covered in bondo. More to do with my lack of skill than anything else, but for thin sheet metal it just didn't work for me.

There are lots of things that brazing is really good for, but mostly I'm working with sheet metal and welding seems to be the better way to go.

Thanks Kelvin. I've had that MIG welder about nine years. Don't tell my boss but I bought it at Lowe's.

Brazing flux can be quite corrosive and the use of more Acetylene in the flame adds more carbon to the surrounding metal which could make it more brittle.

Personally, I'd only use it in areas requiring little or no strength, and where I can get to both sides of the work to clean up flux around the weld.

THEN, when you've discovered you've screwed up (or your braze cracks) you CANNOT weld over it without COMPLETELY removing all the braze material. That's 10 times harder than cleaning it in the first place.

In my experience, brazing is great for some applications (add an oxygen sensor bung to a cast iron manifold), but not so good for sheetmetal work. Brazing can be very strong when done properly (the whole front suspension frame of XKE's is brazed together), but poor if done improperly. It is especially useful for joining non identical materials, whereas welding is not.