It broke right in the middle of the weld between the 2 parts of the tube, right at the rear edge of the chromed sleeve. A clean straight crack. Im going to remove the old weld and try to reweld it, any advice other than preheating? Pic's are coming.
Seen a D8L do the same thing but broke completely off,my advice is before you remove the master link find a way to tie back the front frame to the rear with a come-along or else the recoil spring in the front housing may finish off the cracked piece and injure you also.You will need tooling to remove the spring from the housing if you dont the heat from welding and with sping pressure may do funny things to the housing(bending,warping,etc.)
Postheating is almost as important as preheating. Be sure to do both or the welds may tend to crack. Also, don't get too carried away preheating. Do the research on what heat for what thickness of material. What welding method and filler are you using?
It's already taken apart, the tube was completely broken, thats how it was spotted track tensioned like a guitar string. The plan right now is stick with a stick thats called ESAB 48 here. Originally it seem to have been welded with mag since there still is that typical weld spatter on the sides left.
I'd be real interested in seeing what that looks like. Any change for some photos?
Here's a few pic. Both parts showing the failed weld seam. It's a very clean crack, right in the middle of the weld seam and the intial point of failure seem to be where the start/stop were. The rear tube beveled 30degrees in preparation for a new weld. Going to pull off the chromed sleeve from the front part and bevel that to match and then clamp them togehter with some threaded rods to minimize the risk of them going out of alignment when starting to weld.
We had a D5M break in the exact place. We bevelled everything best we could and preheated then stick welded. We put a new Chrome sleeve on and its been running for over two years now with no problems.
You will probably have to cut your chrome sleeve off and you can get them at a pretty good price aftermarket. Preheat the sleeve and it will slide right on.