A preheat would not have hurt.  I wanted to see how it worked without it.  Worked fine this time, but it may have made it weld better in the beginning.   I would have preheated it if I was going to try aluminum bronze.  That would have been my other option if the casting got too hard.

I have a roll of 21b to try.  Trying to burn up this roll of Lincoln Stuff.

I made it.  The swivel base came from McMaster Carr

I am told that aluminum bronze wears better than silicon bronze.  Aluminum bronze was an option for this job.  If possible, I wanted to do it with regular mig wire, because this machine is going to be used pretty hard.  Sometimes it runs a hammer.  I think that was part of why it was loose.  7000 hours of a hydraulic hammer will loosen things up.  The customer has 3 excavators.  This one is the oldest.  He likes it better than the new ones, so he wanted to restore it to a new condition. 

I really like carbide compared to high speed steel.  I am also very supersized in the difference between cheap carbide and good carbide.  Feb in Canada sounds like a great time to be line boring:)

I was using pulse mig.  Probably around 140 amps

I have used plug welds.  I like making them with the mag drill so there is no need to clean the hole. Torch works to.   I could have used some on this, but I decided that it probably didn't need it.

The excavator is a pretty nice Kubota.  It just came into my shop a couple of days ago with a broken final drive.  I am going t get that fixed up and it will be ready to go