where assumptions get you

My old Hobart welder--1941 with a four cylinder Wisconsin engine--wasn't working this Spring. She was fine in the fall, but her winter nap must have taken something out of here because, while the engine fired right up, the welder gave out not a single amp of juice.

It's hard to work on this old machine because I have no information on it and no schematic to show me around. Requests on websites with forums of tinkerers and even a call out to the manufacturer provided nothing of assistance. But I wake up one morning to find an email from Canada where someone on one of the sites not only sent me a scan of old documents, he also kept looking around for other information, which is a tall order considering we're talking about a machine 50 years old that even the manufacturer has no records for.

All I needed to do was flash the exciter windings and that would re-magnetize the iron core and then the welder would crank up plenty of voltage. I'll spare you the tech details, but I kept insisting that this welder--basically a big DC generator--was self-exciting and had no separate windings. This guy kept saying that there must be an exciter and kept sending me more scans. Finally, I realized that I was wrong. Had I had my eyes open--well, really my brain open--I would have had this thing fixed right away. In reality, had it not been for someone else seeing things clearly, I'd still be staring at a welder that just makes a lot of noise but no spark.

How often do we close ourselves off from solutions or possibilities in life due to assumptions that we make and protect?

Smooth sailing

Some days feel like I get nowhere; others, like today, I gallop. Here's what all got accomplished:

I started out by getting the 80 amp breaker wired into the panel for the welder. Couldn't afford (or didn't want to afford) a price for a new breaker, so I found one on Ebay for 15 bucks. The welder, a behemouth of a thing, pulls 80 amps at 240 VAC. So, I'm that much closer to welding on the hull.

I got the wiring figured out and fixed on my big trailer air compressor. Since it's designed to be used by guys in the construction trade who, no offense, just wanna gettr done and won't be keeping an eye on engine gauges, this thing many fail safes. The engine will shut down if there's low oil pressure, or if the manifold temp gets too high or if the compressor pressure gets to high or if the engine overspeeds. When any of those things happen, it cuts of power to the coil AND shuts off fuel to the carb.

Fine. But what was throwing me was the fact that I couldn't get voltage thru the sensors and to the coil. Seems like the problem was in some missing circuitry...Turns out that they had installed a starter button that you hold in to bypass all the sensors and energize the system so you can start the engine. When everything is running, then you let go of the button.
Well. Yeah, now I know this! The button said "Push to start" so I just thought it was a starter button to crank the starter motor. Their lack of specificity and my assumptions added up to 4 hours of wire-tracing and head-scratchin'. But, it now runs great.

And, finally, I got a fuel system rigged up for the Wisconsin/Hobart gas welder. A friend gave me an Evinrude gas tank from his old outboard motor. Well, actually he gave me two and I told him I'd sell the other one on Ebay for him in return. I hooked the hose up to the fuel pump on the Wisconsin engine and that'll work just fine. I can even use the pressurizing pump on the tank to prime the system after it's sat for a prolonged period of time.

So I got the shop welder hooked up to do hull repairs, got the air compressor running to power my sandblaster, and got the fuel system running for my gas welder which I'll use to weld up the tracks on Millie the crane out in the field where she's far away from electricity and my shop. Millie is crucial to this project because she does all the heavy lifting of boat hulls and related equipment.

And all this after church and before supper. Yep, I'd call it a galloping day.