Another thread made mention of welding and it sparked my thoughts on the subject. "Sparked".. haha.

I know there are some real professional fabricators on this board and I have respect for skills beyond my own, and even more respect when the highly skilled take time to post and share their experience. I have as many others have, gained mass amounts of knowledge from this crazy "internet thing". I don't claim to be a professional at anything other than my day job.

With that said, someone mentioned that, and I'm paraphrasing here- but it was something to the effect of "MIG welding without shielding gas is utterly hopeless/useless".

That kind of struck a little nerve with me. Here's why:

I completely disagree. No more than a half day's drive from here, is a huge area of sand dunes in Michigan. It's called Sliver Lake Sand Dunes. From Nascar country in the southern states, all the way up to the tip of Michigan, there are local off road riding areas and multitudes of dirt and asphalt racing tracks. Not really much for high speed road course racing, but they're here too. Auto-X which takes place in every major market in the country.

These um, shall we say "Backyard racers" have been building their own race cars, dune buggies and bastardized 4x4 creations powered by everything you can imagine from chain saw engines to snowmobile powered cars & bike engines into the big V8's and beyond.


Most commercially sold landscaping trailers are built the same way that the majority of these cars are built. Gasless MIG welders. Yes, gas is cleaner, leaving less slag and spatter. Yes, gas will allow you to have more control when welding. Yes it's better to use a TIG welder and have only the best of everything money can buy. It's better to use only commercial ramps & lifts to put engines in cars, but guys do it with boards & jack stands every single day and years later, those engines are still in those cars.

But to say that Gasless MIG has no value, is hopeless and should be avoided, that's just wrong. That's the way cars have been built, by local racers- for generations. Can you do that in Nascar? No, but these local boys don't run at 215 mph around tens of thousands of people. More like 95 mph down the straights, if they're lucky.
Can you do use that technique in any professional racing anywhere? Probably not. Can you use it to weld a cage together or build a perfectly functioning, relatively safe race car to use on a local level? Yes. Yes you can. Sorry for another long winded rant- but this is an open forum and the end result, is that I hope to learn something and perhaps others can learn more as well.

Here's a sample of gasless MIG welding that I do. I think it's perfectly acceptable. Flux core .035 wire. Many creations have been built this way.







Not everyone has access to expensive, modern tools & facilities. But that never stopped us before. Someone should however, stop that Imitation Pagani guy.

Contribute to the welding thread in any way you choose. I'm going to get a beer.