New life to an older war horse

[dragoneggs]

Quite amazing restoration! Maybe incredible is a better way of putting it.

 

[rswyan]

Beautiful work ... true craftsmanship :thumbsup:

 

[Reyer Farms]

Awesome works of skill and patience. Wow.

 

[Frank Surber]

my customer buys a lot of service trucks then outfits them with these smaller machines, He says he has averaged from $3,500 to $5.000 more on the trucks that have machines that I refurbished than ones that just have fair looking machines mounted on them.
I've done about a half a dozen of the small welders for him now.
the 400 Airpac will probably be sold as a stand alone machine.
That is if he doesn't decide he needs to keep it and store it beside the TYE 14' no till drill I rebuilt for him.
He's been offered 20 grand for the TYE drill but says he thinks he wants to keep it, he wont put it in the field because he likes the draw it brings to his place of business.

 

[stihlman]

I tried my hand at a welder restoration this summer. I had a chance to buy a 1966 Lincoln SA200 straight out of a farmer's barn where it had been sitting for years. Fortunately it had no major mechanical or electrical problems, just lots of cosmetics to deal with. Here are some before/after pictures

 

[Frank Surber]

You got to love those red-face Lincolns, if it was a 66 then it should be copper wound.
I think it wasn't until 69 or 70 that the copper clad alum. winding.
You did a nice job. Did you need to use a commutator truing stone. Or did you just use some fine Emory cloth on a stick to polish the commutator.

 

[Shield Arc]

Mid 1973 is when Lincoln went to aluminum.:thumbdown:
I've done a few SA-200s.

 

[Arc weld]

You never use emery cloth on a commutator. They make special commutator stones for that. Emery cloth is metallic and will cause sparking. The machine in question is what you see in the dictionary under "BARN FIND" :cool2: Looks like it was just used last week.

 

[Frank Surber]

Mid 1973 is when Lincoln went to aluminum.:thumbdown:
I've done a few SA-200s.

Shield arc you may be correct in the year that they came out with aluminum winding.
But the time frame doesn't fit for some reason.
I worked at a Blacksmith/ welding & machine shop from 1965 through early 71. The owners son bought a new SA in either late 69 or early 71 to replace the machine he had and his one comment was he said it had aluminum winding which made it a little lighter than his previous machine.
Light enough in fact that for a while we also hauled my Wisconsin powered short hat on his rig when we went out on pipeline repairs for the REA
It couldn't have been later than that because I left for the Army in Sept of 71 and didn't seen him again until late 77 after I left the service.
This has me wondering if Lincoln didn't put out a few experimental aluminum wound machines otherwise why would I have known about his?

 

[Frank Surber]

You never use emery cloth on a commutator. They make special commutator stones for that. Emery cloth is metallic and will cause sparking. The machine in question is what you see in the dictionary under "BARN FIND" :cool2: Looks like it was just used last week.

Arc weld that was part of my reason for asking. I used to lathe cut commutators on many different types of armatures then sometimes have to cut the mica insulators on commutators that had to be turned further than recommended to true them up.
Just about all old pipe-liner's back in my day carried commutator stones on their rigs