are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

exactly what the title says, no one around my area sells "mild steel weld els", but at home depot i found "black steel" elbows that look exactly the same. the guy told me that the black is just a paint that they put on there to keep it from rusting and that the metal was cold rolled mild steel.
any one ever try these or should i just buy some from acestainless

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

http://www.acestainless.com/

http://store.racing-solutions.org/

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

^^^ holy ------- hot avatar... who is that?

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

everyone asks and i honestly dont know. i just saw titties poppin out and was thinking that would be a better avatar then my ugly mug.

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

HD ---- is just cast steel, if not cast iron. Its not so much paint, its an light anti-rust coating.

I can say it welds nicely, I made a mani from their 2" black pipe and elbows, and with my awsome MIG'ing skillz its still holding the T3 turbo in its topmount config 8 months later. No cracks anywhere. Can't beat a $7 manifold :1

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

i'm going to have go to HD and check this ---- out. Did you find it with the straight pipe?

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

ive never seen butt weld els at home depot, only threaded ----.

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

well i can say that those elbows sucked ass, i started by cleaning them off and then putting some sopt welds around where i was welding and as the were cooling they just cracked right in half. at first i was using 100amps but that wasnt getting the job done so i upped it to about 175 and fused away, i got nice penetration all the way through but as soon as i let the whole thing cool it just cracked right down the center of the weld and was easily broken apart.

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

Weld els are the way to go. Got mine at Mcmastercarr.com, but I may check into the sponsers sites as it looks like they might be cheaper and easier to locate on their page. :S

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

well i got lucky and one of the plumbing supply warehouses in madison can get them for me for $5 a pop, pretty sweet deal.

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

Madison in what state?

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

wisconsin

Re: are black steel weld els the same as mild steel
 

Thats weird, I live in WI too so they should use the same supplier. Actually all of the 'northern planes' region of HD's should for that matter. I took two 2" elbows, ground down the metal so I was at fresh stuff, then MIG'd away at the full 135ish amps my 120v Lincoln could throw at it. Maybe you used too much heat, since mild steel conducts heat 2x as fast as stainless.

The reason I never bothered with butt el's in mild is that from Mcmaster they are like $5 per elbow vs $7 for stainless. I also planned on having my HF toaster box set to weld stainless by now, but whatever. A few thousand miles and both the pipe and elbows are holding. BTW My up-pipe is pretty bad, I basicly chopped it in half and added a different patch section when I changed the WG location.