bamatoolmaker said:Are you sure it was Iron?What you are describing sounds like magnesium.Ductile iron does contain some magnesium but it should not concentrate in a particular area.If it is an import casting from China,India or Mexico those folks will melt and pour anything they can sell.Do any of you folks remember the radioactive aluminum that we were importing from Russia about 15 years ago?
Oh, It was iron all right, and not that uncertain stuff from the far east! 1963 Ford Cast iron transmission housing. It did the sparky star deal in areas that were cracked while grinding and also in areas that were uncracked. I found a replacement for it for $75, but did try and fix it. Unsuccessfully.
The differential housing was also cracked, and I didn't even try to fix it. After the debacle with the transmission and seeing that it had at least 6 cracks that were non-obvious along with the big ugly obvious one.
Here's a link to some pictures of the cracks. You can see that they were previously repaired and re-cracked.
No big deal, but I was wondering....
jb