I pulled apart my driver side seat a few weekends ago and discovered the sheet metal that makes up the seat back was cracked in several places. Judging by the wear on the seat cover a previous owner had the seat reclined and it was hitting the edge of the package tray rail. The metal is 22ga or 24ga, very thin stuff! I tried welding it back together after watching several videos on Youtube but even with my Hobart 150 on its lowest setting, using CO2/Argon mix, and a copper heat sink behind it I am still blowing holes through it. Has anyone else run in to this when recovering their seats? If so what did you do to fix it? At this point if I can't weld it back together I am considering epoxying a piece of sheet metal over the cracked and damaged area. Once it has the foam and cover on it you will never detect it, I just want to make sure I am doing right by the way I want to repair it. Any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated it.

.023 wire in your welder?

.023 wire in your welder?

Good question. The label was torn off the spool. I know it is copper coated steel wire but that is all. I will mic it tonight and see if I can tell. If not it might be time to buy a new spool.

What about brazing it? Or even brazing a patch over the crack...

E

What about brazing it? Or even brazing a patch over the crack...

I don't know if the metal would stand up to brazing on to it. Let me see what kind of wire I have and go from there. Maybe a case where my wire is too thick and just need to scale down to a thinner wire.

So I picked up a 2lb spool of Hobart .023 wire at Northern Tool yesterday along with some tips and a new ground clamp since a previous owner had attached what looked like a cheap jumper cable clamp. Today I set about trying to make it work. With my welder as low as it would go and a wire speed of around 5.5 I was able to get about 70% of the cracks welded. I did a "staple" kind of weld across the crack since trying to even tack weld at the crack would burn a hole through. I am assuming this happened due to 40 years of metal fatigue. All in all it still looks like crap but it is stronger and no one will see it. I also picked up some 26ga sheet metal at Lowes thinking I might just tack it over the cracks as it would provide a thin plate and some reinforcement.

Have you drilled some stop holes on either end of the crack?

Or you could just get a "new" seat. There are plenty of them out there.

Or you could just get a "new" seat. There are plenty of them out there.

Hey, don't be a spoiler. :laugh: He wants to weld something.