Sometime last year, I acquired a welder. It’s a simple Eastwood MIG 90 that runs off 110, which makes it useful for my potential needs. The first of those needs, I figured, would fall on the sheet metal (or lack thereof) on my Mustang project. Instead, I have finished my first actual welding beyond playing around with scrap metal and it’s for a part of the Montero.
A while back, one of the tabs on my driver seat snapped. It’s a part that connects the upper portion of the seat to the rear, and yes, when it snapped, I certainly felt like a fat ass. I sourced a replacement seat from a fellow Montero owner who rescued one from a junkyard. It’s nearly the appropriate shade of brown but from a different trim so the shape of the seat is different. This has always bugged me until I covered the seats. Eventually, the covers bugged me, too, so I found myself in my garage staring at my broken seat and occasionally glancing at my welder.
It’s time…
I clamped the broken tab to its former self, fired up the welder, and laid down a surprisingly mediocre bead. Mediocre being as much as I could hope for, mind you. I tested the tab by cranking on it a few times. That would be after I let it cool off, of course, as the first time I touched it, I learned just how hot the surrounding metal gets after you weld on something.
Feeling moderately confident, I bolted the seat back to its proper bouncy base. Then I took a drive with my daughter to run errands and warned her that I could be sitting on the floor at any moment. But it held. The seat hasn’t buckled yet. I haven’t gone off-roading in the truck since the fix, but around town all seems good.
I may have actually fixed something via welding, and it feels pretty good, man. I was too excited about my weld to get a picture of it, which is the only shameful part of this post. For that, I apologize. But I’m not tearing the seat back down to get the shot. this is a set-it-and-forget-it sort of fix for right now.
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