self 12v electroplating car and two decades

[bgd73]

Cars rust. to claim newer doesn't, well, you haven't seen 20 years yet.

I found something interesting. I have been running the same models for 12 years, its an old sube.
23 years this month. I do alot of welding, I mean a freakish amount. It would take a day to decipher how much I have welded.

I found in the winter, if the battery isn't packed correctly, around the steel brackets that hold it in, and the bottom, a substance builds up. not on the posts, but on the steel brackets.

its a bit salt, and definately a metal, maybe calcium ... and it loves to appear after snow storms...and the bracket has gotten thicker. it is not the same guage as when it began.
I found anything with rivets gets very very tight and stays there, usually inspecting in the summer I find these things... something extra is building on them. Welds at 60k psi, aren't the same size glob I welded..they shrunk...

Where Is It going? How does solid steel "flow"?

The icing on the cake was finding the welding wire material, on a unpainted spot under the middle of the car. I didn't weld there, how did it get there....it perfectly filled in a small unpainted spot, shiny as the weld wire...


I concluded, it is self electroplating in nature.

by its own battery, salty maine snow storm (especially), flux in the weld wire to be a strong enough acid for the cathode anode part of the process... to linger for months and years afterward apparently.


I got a laugh out of it. I learned years ago, the welds will look like they disappeared if less than a .25 inch bead, a mechanic told me this...I never got an explanation until the internet. Underneath all the protective coatings...the steel is alive.

Newer cars have a different process, it is more towards the grade of SECC found in computers. They can take an electrical pounding for a long time (including hertz). the old cars need a bit of work...but end up a bit of something nothing else will be...

if you have mysterious electrical gremlins, this is one reason, and urethane with primers an other coats is a stopper ...its called paint.

worth a mention. I find some change grounds in thier cars, and blame them first. It really isn't the grounds, it is what the grounds are attached to, and it can affect efficiency, of course.

I just babbled all this to mention paint with real stuff. The two part urethane is the best winner yet.

[Christ]

Did you know that glass isn't really solid? You can tell this by looking at 100+ year old windows. They're thicker at the bottom.

[almightybmw]

Materials Science. I hate the class, but it explains all of this, even the liquid glass (which by asme standards has to flow a certain amount over a time period to constitute liquid vs. solid, which that glass is off by a hundred years or so..).

As much as I find some of the information boring, the professor says the basics of the class explain welding, and it shows with talk of micrograin structures, heating and cooling cycles, corrosion, and few other things. I think even an experienced welder could learn something from the class (maybe not this one specifically, but the Material Science in general).

[Christ]

Originally Posted by almightybmw

Materials Science. I hate the class, but it explains all of this, even the liquid glass (which by asme standards has to flow a certain amount over a time period to constitute liquid vs. solid, which that glass is off by a hundred years or so..).

As much as I find some of the information boring, the professor says the basics of the class explain welding, and it shows with talk of micrograin structures, heating and cooling cycles, corrosion, and few other things. I think even an experienced welder could learn something from the class (maybe not this one specifically, but the Material Science in general).

I wonder if it's ever occurred to anyone that the glass is thicker at the bottom because 200 years ago, glass making wasn't as precise as it is today, and truly flat panes would have been nearly impossible...

[thatguitarguy]

To do list:
1) Rotate all the glass in the house.

[McTimson]

Originally Posted by Christ

I wonder if it's ever occurred to anyone that the glass is thicker at the bottom because 200 years ago, glass making wasn't as precise as it is today, and truly flat panes would have been nearly impossible...

It has. Any professor I've had who mentioned the glass thing has told us that it's not because it flows to the bottom, they just couldn't make it perfect back then.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

And did they install ALL of the panes with the thicker bit at the bottom? If the glass was made unevenly and does not flow, then the thicker part will be randomly located in any part of the glass: top, sides, or the bottom. If it flows, then all/most of the thicker parts will be nearer the bottom.

[Christ]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Hi,

And did they install ALL of the panes with the thicker bit at the bottom? If the glass was made unevenly and does not flow, then the thicker part will be randomly located in any part of the glass: top, sides, or the bottom. If it flows, then all/most of the thicker parts will be nearer the bottom.

I disagree. While it may not have been very easy to create a standardized thickness in a pane of glass, it would have been an exceedingly simple task to measure the glass and set it stable-side down. (thicker side)

This is supported by the fact that the glass isn't universally thicker on just one end, as would suggest a flow. All the panes of glass that I've removed from barns and the like during disassembly and materials salvage were randomly thicker in certain areas. The bottoms most notably, but also in several places along the edges. Does the glass flow outward and down at the same time?

Honestly, we're not even talking about 1/4" here. More like a few thousandths difference between segments of the same pane.

The suggestion that they're saying supports that glass is fluid is simply that glass is able to transfer light cleanly. All other true solids in nature cannot.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Christ

The suggestion that they're saying supports that glass is fluid is simply that glass is able to transfer light cleanly. All other true solids in nature cannot.

Not so. Most non-metallic crystals (and crystals by definition are true solids) will transmit light. Quartz crystals, salt, sugar, diamond... Every individual crystal transmits light, it's the reflections off the myriad non-parallel surfaces that gives the bulk material its white appearance.

As for the "old glass is thicker at the bottom because it flows" myth, that comes from old stained glass windows in European cathedrals (some of which might be close to a thousand years old). But the window makers were just (quite sensibly) putting in the glass with the thick ends down.

There are likewise glass objects - beads and such - from archeological sites, and natural volcanic glasses such as obsidian. If glass did flow enough to be noticed in American windows that are only a few hundred years old at most, why haven't these much older glasses dribbled away?

[Christ]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Not so. Most non-metallic crystals (and crystals by definition are true solids) will transmit light. Quartz crystals, salt, sugar, diamond... Every individual crystal transmits light, it's the reflections off the myriad non-parallel surfaces that gives the bulk material its white appearance.

As for the "old glass is thicker at the bottom because it flows" myth, that comes from old stained glass windows in European cathedrals (some of which might be close to a thousand years old). But the window makers were just (quite sensibly) putting in the glass with the thick ends down.

There are likewise glass objects - beads and such - from archeological sites, and natural volcanic glasses such as obsidian. If glass did flow enough to be noticed in American windows that are only a few hundred years old at most, why haven't these much older glasses dribbled away?

Good point. I'm not sure where I got that from?