I stopped reading to see if you had taken care of this yet Cody but I would tell you to just get it welded and be done with it. If the welder you know said "I don't know anyone who can weld cast" he really doesn't know too much. Look in the phone book for someone who is a portable welder not some guy who has only ever worked in a shop with his nice little gas wire feed. You can weld cast but it has to be either kept cold or pre-heated. Since you are only repairing a hole I think it would be pretty easy to keep cool(100f).

I'm sure it could have been welded but put yourself in my shoes. The two welders I spoke to said that a bolt was the way to go. I didn't want to trust some inexperienced yahoo who fucks up my manifold when a simple plug would do the trick. The only thing that's sure is it's tricky and nobody could recommend any welders that wanted to even try...including yourself, Juicy. ;)

So they were out of steel 1/8" plugs at True Value ( I told the fuckin guy to hold me one but he refused) so I got a brass one and a couple steel 1/4" plugs.

My hokey patch job was holding just fine. I pulled out the probe and cleaned up the threads of the hole with the 1/8" tap and tried the brass plug. It seemed to grab with only a few mm of threads left but I figured that was enough. I think it was probably sticking into the pipe by a 1/2" at the most but I took the angle grinder to it and shortened it anyway. Then I cleaned the threads up on it with the correct die from my coworker's set and screwed it in. I feel like I was only able to put like 4 or 5 ft/lb on it at the most but it only gave off a small bubble before sealing up...hopefully for good. If not, I've got the larger plugs I can use one of.

Welcome to post #23 and the obligatory "I told you..." :P Glad it is fixed.

Dean, you told me to do a million different things. The law of averages says no matter what I did, it's likely to be something you suggested. :P J/K Thanks for the suggestion.

We'll see how it holds over time. I can check on it without removing anything so that's kind of cool.

I was out of town skank! I would have been more than happy to take a look at it and if I didn't feel confident in doing it than my dad could have. My dad is a ironworker and has been welding since before I was born. If your plug that Dean suggested fails, we can talk about fixing it.:lol:

:lol: Cool.