Advice on Welder

I'm going to buy a welder to have a go at repairing my D1 Sills.

I've done a bit of research and am likely going to get a Clarke.

This one is a good price but goes down to 35 amps. Is that too high for patching sills?

Clarke MIG 145 No-Gas/Gas MIG Welder - Machine Mart

It does gas or no-gas and I'll be doing the sills outside. Would I be better using gas for this?

Cheers, Andy

Likely to be a handful on thin body panels even with 0.6 wire and argo light gas . Personally I would always go with gas and try to make a bit of a windbreak if the gas shroud is likely to get blown away . Fluxcore wire does have its uses , I use it myself sometimes but it burns hotter and for a novice that spells trouble with bodywork . You will want to get any small welder a conversion hose and regulator to use either pub CO2 or welding gas from an independent supplier , rather than little bottles or a contract with BOC or Air Products .

All of this is summed up in a recent thread that I will try and link you to . Also there is an excellent UK mig welding forum and instruction site that also sells good kit cheaply with honest no bull**** advice on what you actually do and dont need . And thats rare .

MIG Welding Tutorial, Techniques and Practical

have a scan around that while I find the link to that recent thread

Clarke welders are generally good, this looks a decent welder for general purpose welding inc patching your sills, 35amp will be fine as long as you cut back to good metal. The only thing which these welders is that they sometimes don't put enough gas through and it gets blown away easily outside. If you have some way of sheilding yourself from wind (a tarp or sheet of timber work well enough) then this welder is fine. I'd always use gas over gasless, 0.6mm wire.

Have a look at this too

http://www.landyzone.co.uk/lz/f8/your-thoughts-welder-please-184324.html

I used a clarke 155 turbo on my disco. It did everything I asked of it, from welding in 3mm box sections into the sills, to patching up the thin inner panels. I reckon the one you are looking at will suit you fine..

Appreciate all the info so far. Very helpful.

We use a Clarke TurboMIG and its never let us down, its a 195 amp unit which we use for chassis and bodywork welding. After a bit of practise its pretty easy, the golden rule is crispy bacon... any welder worth thier salt knows what im on about there...

I can get a Sealey 130 Super Mig locally for a good price. This looks like it is ready for Co2/Argon gas. It does 30 to 130amps.

The Mig Welding site states that this should be good for up to 3mm steel. Will this do if I need to patch the 300 tdi chassis down the line?