Quote Originally Posted by Steve View Post
Any time I mess with galvanized I spot weld. Those spot welders that Harbor Freight sells are pretty good for what they are. I hate welding with arc or gas galvanized as it pops and smokes and is generally a PITA. The Spot welder just hits it with one small area and it holds like nothing else. Now I have the Powertig 250EX, I am looking at using it for spot welding too on galvanized.

I have a friend who is a body man and he often uses galvanized sheet for car body repair. He uses glue to hold it down and in almost 15 years, the cars he has fixed for rust have never rusted again according to him. He also rustproofs the daylights out of the repair areas on the back side which also helps. He says that gluing is way better than welding for body repair as the technology has gotten better and there is no heat distortion to deal with.
We just added a few galvanized shelf bottoms in a metal box frame for a fellow (we have an NDA on the box and it is pretty smart what he is going to make $$$). It is a prototype.

We used the IMIG-200, drop volts down to 16 range (1/8" to 20 ga.) and wire speed really slow. It works quite well. We grind what we can to avoid the white smoke of course. Hit the heavy metal and melt into the sheet.

A spot welder would have been nice, but all can be done with a MIG or TIG. I doubt we (Everlast) will ever carry a sport welder and I never went for the HF one as it flexes like their vise grips, I played with the one on display. Sure it would have worked well probably. Vise grips and drill bits are not there strong point for sure.

There are a number of guys that now use the glues. I have seen it done and was going, heck I can do that.

Once you take anything down to the metal (steel) prep the heck out of it so the customer or next owner does not hate you.