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Backward half day in the garage yesterday, I thought I would make the coil plate retaining brackets for welding to the cross-brace tube above the carb inlets. I spent about an hour or so looking for some suitable steel not wanting to use 3mm steel flat because I thought I would braze them on and 3mm plate is at the limit of the heat generated by my brazing kit. I settled on some 1mm thickness square section tube and spent another hour fabricating 3 brackets.
Why I thought this would work I do not know. If I had thought about it for more than a nano-second I would have realized that the chance of me attaching three separate brackets to a 18mm diameter tube and getting the brackets to all sit exactly level with the top surface of the tube was virtually zero.
Worse, when I had made the brackets I had another rush of blood to the head and rather than wait for the delivery of more gas to braze them in place I thought I would mig weld them to the tube. More haste less speed.
MiG welding dissimilar thickness materials (brackets 1mm, tube circa 2.5mm) particularly in a lap joint requires a level of skill that I do not possess. The result was really obvious to everyone except me. A bracket full of holes and a frame tube with unsightly gobbets of weld bead randomly projecting from the top surface.
Today I will have to spend an hour grinding and filing the residue off and a further hour or so making a proper one-piece bracket that has a reasonable chance of being level with the top surface of the tube. Another school day!
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