Cast Repair

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Finished up a repair on a broken bellhousing the other day. 

I was putting an engine in a GMC C6500 chipper truck when I found the top of the bellhousing had broken off. This bellhousing is no longer available and we weren't able to locate a 
used one. That pretty much left repairing it as our only viable option. 

Thankfully the piece was held on the back of the block with a bolt. We cleaned up everything and brazed the piece back on using Si Bronze filler with a tig welder.

The whole transmission hangs off the back of the bellhousing in this truck. There's no rear trans mount at all. I wanted to put a reinforcement on the repaired area as I didn't want it to crack later on. I drew it up in CAD and cut out it on our CNC plasma table. After I cleaned it up, I bent it to fit the curve of the bellhousing in our press brake. 

I brazed it all up. I think it will be stronger than the original casting now as I've almost doubled the material thickness where the stress is. 

I think I got a pretty good bead of filler material but some places I had a hard time getting it to wet into the casting at the edges really well. I think the casting was outgasing where this was happening near the corner. It got real black and sooty right there. I was running on AC with 90% penetration. 

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83K10 Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List RCRC Club & Business Member Joined: 17 February 2004 Location: Huntsville, AL Status: Offline Points: 3174	Post Options Post Reply Quote 83K10 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Cast Repair Posted: 26 June 2016 at 2:35am
	Finished up a repair on a broken bellhousing the other day. I was putting an engine in a GMC C6500 chipper truck when I found the top of the bellhousing had broken off. This bellhousing is no longer available and we weren't able to locate a used one. That pretty much left repairing it as our only viable option. Thankfully the piece was held on the back of the block with a bolt. We cleaned up everything and brazed the piece back on using Si Bronze filler with a tig welder. The whole transmission hangs off the back of the bellhousing in this truck. There's no rear trans mount at all. I wanted to put a reinforcement on the repaired area as I didn't want it to crack later on. I drew it up in CAD and cut out it on our CNC plasma table. After I cleaned it up, I bent it to fit the curve of the bellhousing in our press brake. I brazed it all up. I think it will be stronger than the original casting now as I've almost doubled the material thickness where the stress is. I think I got a pretty good bead of filler material but some places I had a hard time getting it to wet into the casting at the edges really well. I think the casting was outgasing where this was happening near the corner. It got real black and sooty right there. I was running on AC with 90% penetration.