Well, today I poked a hole in my graders fuel tank. The air was pretty blue around for a bit.. Call Zieglers to see how much a new tank is. $1200 bucks. Bad news. Worse news, none in the Cat system anywhere. A quick view to Youtube says they can be welded with a soldering iron. Pssf, soldering irons sold these day wouldn't melt it worth a ****. Pull a 12v glow plug out of my pickup, hook a switch up to it grab a hand full of zip ties and welded that hole shut, put a chunck of fine screen over the weld. Covered it with another pile of melted zip ties. I welded it shut and that sucker hasn't leaked a drop and I did it with the fuel in it. I LIKE PLASTIC FUEL TANKS!!!!!
My recently purchased Weller 250 with a paddle tip will do that all day long. And, c'mon, no details of what put the hole there in the first place?
Piece of well pipe popped up and poked it,,, never happen like that in 29 million years again. Well only to me anyway.
Used to use old combs for that. Nice work!
This is actually the first time I've heard of a punctured tank. I have no idea why. Maybe others are embarrassed to admit it?? Nice repair!!!!
Hillbilly engineering FTW. Woo-Hoo!
We had a punctured tank on an H series Cat grader. Tire chain side link snapped and proceeded to tear a nice hole in the side of the tank. Of course, it happened right at a creek crossing on a logging road.
Well, I didn't lose much fuel.... just UNDER the epa limit.
There is another thread at the moment where someone is looking for a MacGyver type to host a tv show. Sounds like you’re just the man for the job grandpa.
Ha Queenslander, i've been doing what im doing for the last 53 years and haven't got that right yet!!! I think that I would be untrainable at my age.
Very interesting repair. I would never have thought of using glow plug. Soldering irons are available up to 400-plus watts!
I've since rigged up a handle and switch for the glowplug. If I need to do soldering in the field , I just hook the leads up to the power of the vehicle im working on an use that . Is a wonder on fixing lights on the back of my dump trucks... power is already back there and no dang cords to string out .