HF 4x8 trailer ready for welding

[daveesl77]

I got the HF 4x8 non-folding trailer the other day and it took me about 3 hours to put it together. I haven't welded in about 30 years, but figured what the heck and bought one of the HF 90 flux wire welders. I never wire welded (always stick) but decided that this would be an interesting learning experience. Bought the cheap self-darkening hood. Still had my old gloves and stuff. I broke out a few pieces of scrap steel I had laying around and decided to practice with the stock wire. I was pretty darn happy. The practice beads came out looking good. Today I got in a new roll of .035 wire and did another test. Wow, what a difference good wire makes. Original bead was passable, this one is downright pretty. I figure after the warranty expires I will probably do the DC conversion, but for now the AC is doing fine.

So tomorrow I'll break out the grinders, wire brushes and square the frame. I intend to weld every bolt joint, the suspension and essentially everything. I figure I'll just leave the bolts in as it can't hurt. I also made the decision to add in a 2x2 square stock tube to run from the cross member behind the axle to 18" beyond the existing hitch to lengthen the tongue distance and add strength. I'll then sand blast it all and prime/paint it black. Not a big fan of the bright red.

While I've never built a teardrop before, I have built a couple of large sailboats, built a couple of houses and a pop-up camper. Because of how we camp in the past, I have pretty much all the little nice thingies that end up costing more than the basic build, such as on-demand hot water heater, small sink, complete water system, porta potty, LED lights, trailer stabilizers and lifts, windows, etc. And now I get to prove to dear wifey that all those garage gadgets I've picked up over the years will come into play, my compressor, router table, band saw, cut-off saw, and other such fun things.

Thank you all for this wonderful site and I promise I'll start doing photos as we do the build. I have no time schedule set on when I hope it to be complete, but I would like to do a trip next fall. I start getting cabin fever after a couple of months and our last campout was the first of December.

dave

[KCStudly]

Welcome to the forum. Any thoughts on the size of your build, the profile you will use, and/or the construction style (traditional, skeleton frame, foamie, other)?

[ctstaas]

Hi Dave,
Hopefully your welder has the attachment for cover gas? If it does great. Even though the flux in the wire creates enough cover gas to shield the weld additional cover gas will greatly improve your weld quality. Straight CO2 is sufficient but for even better weld quality a mix of 25% argon 75% CO2. The gold gas we make your welds very good. It is deffinetly worth the price if the welding you are doing is important.
Oh yeah, welcome to the forum.
Enjoy, Chris

[ctstaas]

Hi Dave,
I forgot to mention two things. Current welding engineering wisdom maintains welds on perpendicular surfaces should not be connected. For instance, two pieces that overlap should be welded with four separate welds that do not connect where the adjoining planes intersect.
Another builder recently posted he welded on his HF frame and it warped from heat. To prevent this spend a few extra minutes between welds and let it cool down a bit. It's hard to slow down once you get going but it could probably help.
Happy welding, Chris

[Dale M.]

Umm... IS your wire welder (flux core ) really AC.... My MIG is DC and has ability to reverse polarity for wire type (shield (flux) core or gas shield)...

Just wonder as I never have looked at low end HF or similar fluxcore only welders... Knew I wanted to be able to use shield gas from get go...

Dale

[Dale M.]

Hi Dave,
I forgot to mention two things. Current welding engineering wisdom maintains welds on perpendicular surfaces should not be connected. For instance, two pieces that overlap should be welded with four separate welds that do not connect where the adjoining planes intersect.
Another builder recently posted he welded on his HF frame and it warped from heat. To prevent this spend a few extra minutes between welds and let it cool down a bit. It's hard to slow down once you get going but it could probably help.
Happy welding, Chris

Never heard the perpendicular thing....

Also when welding to prevent serious warp, you weld a inch or two on one side and then go to a point 180 degrees from first weld and do similar weld and it tends to draw metal back into original line as second weld tends to pull tension in opposite direction of first weld.... OR you set every thing up and do a whole series of 1/4 inch tack welds to lock everything in place and come back and final weld again using opposite welds to pull against previous weld...

And on the HF frame, its probably going to have cheap thin power coat on it, it has to be cleaned off to bare metal ( probably ground off before assembly), or the welds will be really contaminated from the burnt power coating and structurally it will be compromised...

Dale

[daveesl77]

Yes, unfortunately the little HF flux wire welder is an AC unit. There is a nice video on youtube showing how to convert it to DC though. I have already done the trailer and yes every joint was brought to base metal. The beads aren't the nicest, but they work and have good penetration. Don't know that I'd go any thicker than say 3/16 max though. I did dump the stock .030 wire and got a spool of good .035, worked much better.

dave