My 90degree Career Change.

[salival]

Hi all.. I'd like to start by saying this is probably going to be a work/perve in progress.. I'll give you all a little bit of background into my job..

I work for a radiator wholesaler and manufacture in Christchurch, New Zealand, We make brass cores and alloy oil/inter coolers and also alloy radiators (we dont make radiator cores, only import)

I started out on sales for about a year, the head tech from the alloy department emo resigned and I got pushed into his job since they were stuck and needed someone with a bit of drive..

I've been in this job fabricating and welding for about 6 months now, I've gone from having 0 fab/welding skills to being semi decent.. Tig welding is getting better by the day..

Now, I have to do alot of practise, we do alot of jobs for showcars and so on.. small minute welds for tube to header plates for the oil/intercoolers and I got sick of making scrap just to throw in the bin.. so why not do my own stuff?

Hello race radiator! Hello oil cooler!

<-- closeup of oil cooler core stacked, core is about 230x200x50mm

<-- closeup of tube to header welds, these tubes are welded individually.. takes a long time on huge cores (1000x500x60 intercoolers etc)

<-- closeup of core with tank material sat ontop of it, tank/core has not been prepped for welding yet.

<-- close up of tube to header welds after being welded, only had 3 tiny leaks and they were in the corners (where you start/stop) of the welds.. not bad

<-- closeup of the prepped tank material, each side has been bevelled as when I weld it on the outside, I feed the amps in along with the filler rod (5535 hi tensile)

After we have it at the tube to header stage we chalk and dye pen test.. basically I spray chalk (LD3 Developer) onto the outside of the header where the welds are, On the tubes towards the header (about 15mm back from the header) I carefully drop dye penetrant.. this stuff is gold, we leave it on dye pen for about a day for oil coolers, it will show up the tiniest of leaks.. I didnt manage to take a picture of my core being dye pen'd but I have one of another to give you an idea..

<-- oil cooler core on dye pen, this is another I welded (no leaks at all) apart from when I ground the outside of the tube to headers back so the tank would fit, this introduced a leak as you can see, the red in the inside of the tubes is a light on the other side of the core..

<-- closeup of the leak, it was an easy fix, clean off with Acetone re weld and regrind and re test..

<-- core shot showing the dye on the tubes, its messy and does stain your hands.. but we wouldnt be without it.. if you leave the dye on there over the weekend.. it will just keep growing until it drys up..

So, that's my oil cooler, as of today (didnt take pics, sorry i'll take some with my digicam) it was completed, only leaks I had were on the ends of the tanks where I start/stopped.. easy fizzers to fix..

it's basically just got -10 fittings on each side of the core.. simple oil cooler but they are really really strong..

I'll also do a writeup on my race radiator that I did.. I dont have build pictures for it only of the end result, but that's ok.. I'll build my self a crossflow double pass 57mm thick race core soon which i'll take pictures of along the way..

I never said I was a welder, i'm just bumbling along, but every day I can notice my welding skills are getting better, I'm now looking back on past jobs i've done and going "eugh" because I know I can do better once my technique gets more refined..

Comments / criticisms are welcome..

Btw, all my welding is done with a watercooled Miller Synchrowave 400 jobbie.. 400 amps of tigging power.. it's great

[Dj laBBy]

Hey mate, good job. Like the ideas, though was just wondering, those"oil cooler cores" aren't they intercooler cores??

Would've thought the flow charecteristics of different liquids to be different(air being liquid). dunno not in the industry, just my opinion

Also thought the cores are normally ally braze welded(not too sure what filler or that) not fusion welded.

Reason i say is that in all of the ally intercoolers and radiators, none are welded except the end tanks on to the tube tops.

Cheers

Robb

[salival]

Hey mate, good job. Like the ideas, though was just wondering, those"oil cooler cores" aren't they intercooler cores??

Would've thought the flow charecteristics of different liquids to be different(air being liquid). dunno not in the industry, just my opinion

Also thought the cores are normally ally braze welded(not too sure what filler or that) not fusion welded.

Reason i say is that in all of the ally intercoolers and radiators, none are welded except the end tanks on to the tube tops.

Cheers

Robb

Hiya,

These are oil cooler cores, using oil cooler tubes, our intercooler (tube + fin) cores are alot different, the tubes are alot bigger.. We have used these oil cooler cores for intercoolers in the past with good success.. but 90% of our product is aimed at industrial side of thing.. i.e very durable.. still performs great though.

We weld the tanks on as well as the tube to header welds, you're thinking of how most alloy products are made (basically heating them till pre melt stage and fusing them together) this is just another way of doing it except we're welding instead of heating (same principle, tho)

[Dj laBBy]

Hiya,

These are oil cooler cores, using oil cooler tubes, our intercooler (tube + fin) cores are alot different, the tubes are alot bigger.. We have used these oil cooler cores for intercoolers in the past with good success.. but 90% of our product is aimed at industrial side of thing.. i.e very durable.. still performs great though.

We weld the tanks on as well as the tube to header welds, you're thinking of how most alloy products are made (basically heating them till pre melt stage and fusing them together) this is just another way of doing it except we're welding instead of heating (same principle, tho)

Ah makes sense then.

Industrial oil cooler core. okey.

Yah a lot of fun welding small stuff on ehy?? My first intercooler was a water/air that i made using 10mm ally tube and welded end caps, then the body then the end tanks. 72 tubes, so 144 welds just for the core. Wow, took 2 weeks.

It didn't have any internal diffusers, so heat tranfer would've been crap, ended up chucking it.

But mate like the idea.