What am I doing wrong? ? Welding help needed

Whats up guys. . Long time, no foruming! ! But hey, I've been tryin to work on my cab on my project. . To give people that dont know my project, I am bodydropped 3.25", thats 1" into the rocker. . I remade the bottom part of the rocker with 3/16" plate. . This is all proving to be quite challenging. . I am in the process of trying to weld the rockers up solid. . And I cant seem to get it right. . Everything I try, i am getting pinholes when I weld. . I read up on it, I read that lack of gas can do that, so I upped my gas pressure to 20 CPH. . I played with the voltage and wire speed, I jus cant figure it out. . And considering that the rockers of my truck are kind of important, I need to get this right! ! I have a Hobart 140 welder, I had the voltage set on 2 of 4, and the wire speed on 40 out of 100. . . Tha gas is set on 20 CPH. . im welding 3/16" plate to mazda sheetmetal. . which is damn thin. . I have tried different techniques, changing the gun angle, i jus cant figure it out. . So what the hell am i doin wrong! ! I welded some other stuff and it came out ok, jus the rockers are givin me hell. .

Oh and i know the welds look like hell. . I dont normally weld so crappy, its jus givin me hell, so as you can see from the pic. . I NEED HELP! ! !


-Josh

Well the first thing I would try from looking at the pics is I would clean the steel up some more. I have seen some paint and undercoating do that too. So the cleaner the better.

I agree with Jason, get that metal as clean as you can. The bubbles are just from contamination in the shielding gas when welding.

contamination somewhere... not necessarily in the gas. could be dirty wire, dirty metal, wrong gas, actually could be a large number of things.... but looking at your pics and knowing your welding up stock rockers... that's your problem. dirty metal. plus welding the shitty sheetmetal to 3/16" is somewhat of a challenge . after you clean up your metal and even wipe it with acetone or something similar concentrate your heat on the plate and just slightly weave it or flick it onto the sheetmetal. to penetrate the plate properly you'll need a good amount of voltage, and obviously not so much on the sheetmetal, that's why i say concentrate on the plate.

Dirty metal is part of your problem
wire wheel or flap disk that before you weld anything even if it looks to be clean
up your gas to 30 or 35

i have the same Hobart but just a 125 and its been great

Turn down the wire speed a little

edit -->


depending on the conditions, 30-35 is too high. if your in a garage type environment you can do all the way down to like 15-20cfh, but in windy outdoor conditions you might turn it up a little higher to 30-35 as mentioned. don't use anything that's going to grind down your already thin sheetmetal... wire wheel or scotchbrite it. if you have scotchbrite discs use those. they're bitchin and don't shoot little wires all in ya.

You need a little more "sweep" too.
Your heat and feed speed may be off a little, but the weld itself looks a bit narrow with a high peak.
This indicates that you're welding in a straight line, without any side to side motion.
Concentrate your puddle on the thicker material, then drag it to the thinner metal with your sweep.
That rust is just surface rust... it has a higher melting point so it floats to the surface of the weld.
A more experienced welder could still lay down a beautiful bead on it, but he wouldn't if he had the means to clean it properly.

whenever you get (perosity)=air pockets /grind and start from there , and push your weld in the opposite direction of where the persosity started ,and make sure you have a clean surface ! (gas can create persoity when in the corner ,cause it likes air hitting the weld and changing the direction of the gas .hope that helps

all above are good points. all i would add is make sure you are pushing the gun and not dragging it. concentrate on the heavier metal then blend it to the lighter metal.