# Get Out And Explore! > Tech Section >  Jeep Steering Bracket Weld Repair

## jch13

A buddy of mine and I went on a Class 6 road in Enfield on the 4th, but we didn't get too far.

Tangent: the signage on some of these trails leaves much to be desired... I hope that top sign didn't say anything important!



Anyway...

 In navigating one of the first significant obstacle his steering box banged off of a rock. About 1/4 of a mile later he face goes white as he slams on the brakes. No steering. This is what we found:



Two tabs broken off, a third hole stripped. We cobbled it back into place and secured it with a ratchet strap, enough to get to the trail head. My buddy then towed it to his garage. 

Apparently he's got some weird mish-mash of jeep parts, plus a custom frame, which results in most or all OTS replacement brackets being no good. Good used examples are exceedingly rare, so, we decided to fix the one he had. During the autopsy we found an old weld repair that was a giant disaster (<20% material penetration) and was the likely culprit in the failed bracket. One ear let go, then the others unzipped. 

I've been a TIG welder for a lot of years, am local to a bunch of people, and figured it would be useful to show what one can do with careful TIG welding. 

Step 1: determine the material. We drilled a small non-stressed portion of the bracket to see if it was cast iron (flakey chips) or steel (curly chips). Luckily it was cast steel. This makes the weld repair a bit easier in some ways compared to cast iron. 

Step 2: Fixture. All the mounting surfaces are co-planar, so we clamped everything securely to a corner of my (rusty) welding table, fitting the broken ears in carefully, and securing them separately from the bulk of the bracket. The broken ears are on the left and right. 



Step 3: Tack weld. It is important to tack weld the broken pieces back in while you can still make up the broken surfaces. They fit together nicely and provided a good reference. A solid tack weld on both ends keeps the ears secured for joint gouging and cleaning.  



Step 4: Gouging and Cleaning. We inspected everything again during this step and found an additional crack near the third mounting hole. Going to need to gouge that too!



The point of gouging is two-fold: get rid of cracked material and allow the weld to completely penetrate the joint.

One side of gouging. 



One crack was too tight of a radius to gouge out with a disc, so we 'snow-man'd the **** out of it' with a drill bit for the same effect. A little trickier to weld up, but it gets the job done. 



All the joints were then cleaned with a SS wire wheel and de-greased with acetone. 

Step 5: weld it up! 

I did the first root pass with everything re-clamped on the table, going hot a slow to ensure complete weld penetration. 



The metal was pretty clean for a cast material. This first pass is way under-cut, going for a full fill on the first pass will lead to dramatic warping of the part. Instead, I did a total of 2-3 passes on each side, alternating and cleaning between each pass, to minimize warping. 

The finished repairs look like this.



Some soot and other **** came out of the base material, comes with the territory of welding cast anything. But overall I was pleased with how the fix went. Took around 90 minutes from my buddy showing up to him leaving. A lot of time (40-50 minutes?) was spent letting the part cool between welding passes. All three mounting surfaces ended up co-planar at the end too. We shall see how it holds up!

Now let me find my flame suit for having posted pictures of my welding on the internet that are not immaculate...

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## Goat

> Now let me find my flame suit for having posted pictures of my welding on the internet that are not immaculate...


How dare you post non-MIG welds that are not made with the trigger pumping technique, which happens to gives Pirate members boners but fundamentally but lacks fusion!

ER70-s6?

<200C interpass?

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## jch13

> How dare you post non-MIG welds that are not made with the trigger pumping technique, which happens to gives Pirate members boners but fundamentally but lacks fusion!
> 
> ER70-s6?
> 
> <200C interpass?


XD

Yes, ER70-S6 wire. I didn't measure interpass temperature (shame on me) just felt it.

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## BlueberryHill

> Now let me find my flame suit for having posted pictures of my welding on the internet that are not immaculate...


Looks fine! That should hold up very well. Nice job with the gouging, says a lot about a serious craftsman.

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## NotThePainter

Can he use a standard jeep steering box skid plate? Those steering boxes are so vulnerable.

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## jch13

> Looks fine! That should hold up very well. Nice job with the gouging, says a lot about a serious craftsman.


Thanks!



> Can he use a standard jeep steering box skid plate? Those steering boxes are so vulnerable.


I am not sure. I agree, it's just.... hanging out there with nothing else to bang into first. He had mentioned getting one of these to strengthen the mounting at least. I just messaged him about getting something like this, seems like real cheap money to protect something so important.

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## BlueberryHill

> I just messaged him about getting something like this, seems like real cheap money to protect something so important.


This is the one I have on my Wrangler, it has some scars so it was worth it.

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