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Re: homemade outboard

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I have a small design augmentation for you.. on the latest part you made, the bearing plate I guess you would call it, I would weld a L bracket onto it for aditional support,That joint will stress just like the mounting bracket up top, not as bad, but it should still be reinforced a bit. These last pictures showed the type of welds you are getting. and I have a question or 2 that might aid in your welding,, maybe not, Is the weld itself more rod then metal? Are you actualy melting the metals you are welding? Are you intentionaly building the weld to that size or is it just comming out that way? I do know a bit about welding principal, I have no idea how much you know, so, you may or may not know this.. A small bead of weld is prefured, a profesional would have a 1/4 inch around that. It would also require very little of a welding rod too do, maybe 2 inches of rod. Hard to gauge this if your using the type of welder that the wire "comes through the weilding head" however my point being, More weld "bigger" is not better. It really looks like most of that weld is rod, that is kinda a bad thing. Can you turn the weilder up to a higher setting? or perhaps just weld quicker? That Unit I saw in the picture looks just like the one I used to weld a home made hitch and bracket assembly together, and then onto my old station wagon when I first got my boat. ( hehe yes, welded it directly to the frame ) SO I kinda think it should be enough for this, of course your unit could be weaker, the one I used did operate on 220 power yours is probably 110. anyway. Uhh... Ow yeah,, back to my point. Did you stress check your welds after you made them? I usualy hammer test them myself, in this case, I would tip the bracket up to a 45 degree angle and wack it with a small sledge hammer with a "medium" amount of force a few times. If it fails that test, Its good you found out now. If you can turn your welder up, I would. it is very important you actualy melt the metal, and not just pile rod around where you want it joined. If your not melting the metal, you are just hot glueing so too speak. You should be turned up enough that you could cut a hole in the materiel if you wanted too, becuse it takes pretty much that much heat to bond your metals in the first place. If you cant cut it, you cant weld it, least thats what the guy who taught me how to weld said.
Mind you , I am not really critisizing you or your ability here, Just trying to make sure you are getting the most out of what ya got too work with, I hate too fail, so naturaly, I want to see you motor not only work, but stay together.
on to another point here. a friend of mine pointed something out to me. Water just might enter the unit from the top, a place you really cant insulate from it. and sugested a interesting simple way to address it. He said, based on the PVC outer shel design,, you should add on another piece to the botom to act as a resivour on the bottom for any water that enters to colect in, he then sugested either a small hand pump with a hose ( aquruim style ) running down the inside of the pvc to the resivour to drain it or,, In place of a formal hand pump,the spray head to almost any spray bottle attached to the hose would work. be like a big windex bottle hehehe. anyway. Ever forward. talk to you later

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