When you’re on the trail
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MotorTranscript
00:00 Hi, I'm Rick Payway, I'm the editor of JP Magazine.
00:14 I'm going to show you how to weld metal together with a car battery.
00:18 Three 12 volt batteries giving you 36 volts of awesome welding power.
00:27 First thing you want to do is take out the battery or at least unhook it because if you
00:31 have a computer on your vehicle it could fry it.
00:33 Don't make the rookie mistake of actually arcing yourself between the posts because
00:39 that's not good for you or for your wrench.
00:43 Alright so here's the stuff that we're going to need.
00:45 First off you need two to three batteries.
00:47 I like three batteries because that gives you 36 volts.
00:50 I like the Optima batteries because they're sealed.
00:52 That way you don't have any hydrogen gas coming out and no danger of explosion.
00:56 You want to have a wrench to put it together, volt meter to make sure they're up to snuff,
01:00 the trail weld cables which really are a nice item, ties it all together.
01:05 Don't forget you've got to have a chipping hammer and a wire brush so you can inspect
01:08 your welds.
01:09 And then your safety equipment, Miller helmet, gloves, jacket and of course fire extinguisher
01:15 that's not burned down the forest.
01:17 I like to use trail weld because it comes in a beautiful little case, comes with goggles
01:23 and a real electrode holder and nice little color coded terminals.
01:28 Alright so this is still step two.
01:30 We're hooking up the battery cables.
01:32 It's 36 volts so you need to put them in series and that's positive to negative.
01:35 So you see we go positive and then we go to negative and then we tighten them up.
01:45 Finally you hook up this one, positive, notice it's red again, and that will be your ground.
01:55 Your final connection is your electrode holder, goes on the negative.
02:01 Make sure that you clear the area of all leaves and debris.
02:03 The last thing you want to do is burn down the forest or your vehicle.
02:07 Step four is cleaning up the area that you're going to weld.
02:09 That makes for a much stronger and better weld.
02:13 Okay, step five, this is where you finally hook up your leads to your material.
02:17 It's really important to get a good ground so you want to do something like that.
02:23 Then of course your rod.
02:26 I like to use 6011 type of rod, about 1/8 inch because we're using three batteries.
02:32 It's going to spark like all get out.
02:34 This is step six, put it on your safety equipment.
02:36 Non-OSHA approved sandals.
02:46 We're going to see how this bad boy works.
02:48 Get a good contact on the rod, make sure it's in there firmly, strike an arc.
02:55 Once your weld is finished, just let it cool naturally.
03:07 No need to put water on it or oil or anything else.
03:10 Let it cool, take your chipping hammer and get rid of all the slag and wire brush it
03:14 and see how good you've done.
03:17 It's always a good idea to check your battery voltage between welding passes because if
03:21 it gets too low, you might not start your car.
03:24 I've never had that problem but we're going to check anyway.
03:27 13 volts, that's a good one.
03:31 That's it, that's how you battery weld.
03:34 All you need is three batteries, some cables, some rod and you can make this field fix perfectly.
03:39 I wouldn't probably want to take it on the highway because underneath is pretty cruddy.
03:42 But to get you home, this is just right.
03:45 All I've got to do now is put everything away.
03:47 "
03:48 "
03:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]