Zinc die casting repair
Mr. White,
I have been restoring a couple of projects the last few years and your products and seminars at Oshkosh have been wonderful.
I am running into some die cast zinc carbureter bodies and also a zinc model aircraft engine crankcase, all of them cracked to varying degrees. What process and materials would you reccomend I try on these?
Thicknesses range from .050" to .250" and some areas I would consider "stresed". Thank you very much
Aaron Novak - Mercury Marine Engineeing
The Tinman Respondeth:
Frankly, zinc is a bummer.
It needs to be cleaned, which is nearly impossible. Then it ranges from nearly aluminum to nearly junk. Finding all of the possible fillers and fluxes possible is nigh impossible. The moist intriguing feature of heating the stuff for repair is that low temp metal beads or sweats out, leaving the "Skull" of the higher temp stuff remaining. Fleshing THAT out using the torch is a labor of love, endurance, and martyrdom earned by few parts, in my opinion. One, for instance, was a carb body for a LeRhone of an earliest vintage known, and it was wanting to run, in public.
Good luck, Kent
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