Welded Steering Column

I took a TIG welding class at TechShop by a high-energy old coot named Scott Saxon.  He was pretty good as far as a teacher goes.  I felt pretty knowldegable afterwards.  Below is my first TIG weld bead.

 

Not a bad bead for a newbie

So with that in mind, I'd targeted the seat post for some welding, but that job turned out to be easier solved by just driving a threaded shaft through the frame and jamming on some nuts.  So that left the steering column/handlebar post to be welded.

I machined up this plate that mounted to the handlebar clamps that came off the green Puch.  Turns out they made a lot of changes from 77 to 78 in terms of the Puch's design.  The handlebars were the first I noticed.  On the red 77, they mount with a post that's wedged down in the front forks.  On the green 78, they mount directly to a the triangular piece of sheet metal that joins the front forks with the frame.  Since I'm rebuilding the 77, I decided I wanted to do the post mount option as it gives me some height adjustability.  However, the old handlebars on the 77 are welded together as one piece and there's no way to get my new handlebars mounted to the old hardware.  So I chopped off the vertical column and made a plate to combine the abilities of the 77 and 78.

Plate to post mount and bracket mount at the same time.

What the setup looks like assembled.

This is all good, except that the plate isn't fixed in rotation relative to the tube.  You can crank down on the center shaft, but there's just not enough friction in the world that you can create to withstand the giant moment arm of the handlebars and wheels.  Let's weld the f*(#$% together!

Post and Plate fixtured and ready to spot.

I did have to make an aluminum spacer to put inside the tube to make sure it was centered with hole in the plate where the locking bolt goes.  I used a dowel pin to align the two and then clamped everything together.

Ready

An ugly job indeed.

The first tack went somewhat ok.  It held things together good, but the aesthetics leave something to be desired.  I also think I was jamming on the power a little hard and overdid things.  I could definitely use some foot control.

Tried tacking the other side and got my filler rod jammed in my pool.

Stuck filler rod.  Had to pry it loose with a pliers.  Coulda just heated it up again.  Duh.

Had to sharpen the Tungsten electrode several times cause I kept getting too close with it as well.

Sharpened Tungsten

Then finished going around the perimeter.  Check out that beautiful bead!

That's nasty.

Wow.  A thing of beauty.

Again, this is not going to be visible.

Can't even see that weld.

Unless you look from this angle.

So it turned out to be functional and a good little job to practice the TIG skills.

Finished product.

Gimme somethin else to weld dammitt!