Dartnut. Keep up the career. Excellent long term financial benifit you will always have work.
After alomost 30years take my advice-
Wear ear protection-you do not want the ringing in my ears 24/7
Wear eye protection always!
Also wear breathing equipment if you can.
These fumes cause cancer. It cannot be totally avoided but every bit helps. Great career choice. It is a needed field with many many options with good training.
Also gloves are huge. A lot of tv shows have guys welding with out gloves- bad choice. I wear Tillman truck driver gloves all the time minimum just for the UV protection. You only have one skin.
Sorry to side track thread. Just happy to see another fellow rod burner. Lol!
Agreed 100%!
I sure wish that i was able to be active in the trade still.
However, after two knee surgeries, back problems, and now arthritis, i was forced to find another occupation.
The over 20 years i spent in the trade were good to me, and i loved it.
Also, i was always very big on wearing PPE, a lot of it before it became mandatory.
Nice to see another welder on here as well!
Back to the thread discussion, that is an unusual place for the bell housing to crack.
Unless it was removed some time ago and dropped, had loose bolts, or something got between the mating surface between the block and the bell housing, i would bet that it is a casting flaw.
I've actually seen some castings that were so poorly done that they had ''pockets'' of carbon or bad porosity in them.
The crack appears to me to have been there some time because of the rust in the crack.
Finally, if repaired properly, the part would be as good as new or even better.............