Muggyweld

While waiting for FedEx to deliver my replacement tools, I’ve been playing around with one of the yet untried restoration challenges.

I first heard of a product called Muggyweld some years ago. It’s a low melting-temp soldering/welding system with several advertised uses, but my interest was specifically to repair pitted pot metal parts.

The shop that re-chromed most of my ’56 parts also does pot metal repair, but what I had done by them was fairly expensive and the results were not show quality by any means. When I brought the parts to the shop I stated I only expected driver quality, so the less than perfect quality wasn’t an issue, but I was curious to learn for myself just what it takes to repair soft metals in the event I wanted to try performing the labor intensive part of the job myself.

After watching a YouTube video, I decided to experiment with Muggyweld, first to see if it’s something an amateur should attempt, and also to see if I could save a few bucks. My labor is cheap, but the kit is not, as I received an airtight plastic container with half a dozen alloy rods the size of standard welding rods, and a small bottle of flux that looks and flows like honey. The kit was $59 on Amazon.

I practiced on a couple of seriously pitted windshield wiper mounts before I attempt repairing the better set, and I’ll show you what I have accomplished so far.

The part on the left is one of my better parts, and it shows the typical pitting on sixty year old pot metal that’s been exposed to the elements most of its life.

The center part has been wire brushed and sanded to remove the peeling chrome, but I haven’t yet begun to grind out the corrosion. That operation involves the use of a Dremel tool with a variety of attachments, mainly tiny burs so the deep pits can be drilled out much like a dentist does teeth.

One side of the part on the right shows how much material had to be removed to get to clean base metal. As you can see, the surface is very rough. The other side has had Muggyweld added to build up the surface to the original level. I didn’t make an effort to fill in the few remaining voids, but rather wanted to see the effect of grinding and sanding the soft material with different types of tools.

Not sure if I can get the parts as defect free as the ones I had done at the plating shop, but I’ll give it a try.