MIG Welder advice

I'm going to take the plunge and buy myself a MIG welder and learn how to weld

So any recommendations on which welder to buy? Will be looking at repairs to the chassis and (possibly) body work.

Cheers
Pete

There is an entire community devoted to such things at mig-welding.co.uk (I have no association with them other than knowing they exist ) but for general farm use I like my sip stuff.

I've always loved working with Kemppi, they are really good. But pricey.

I've also worked with ESAB, EMW and few others and in reallity they're all good.

Get a cheap inverter stick welder to practice with. its easier than mig, but no good for thin body work stuff. some of them have the ability to tig weld also. Lidl were selling a stick one for £69 the other week, so you should be able to get something similar on ebay for that price.

My MIG is a gasless one, so makes a fair mess. I would buy a gas/no gas one if doing a lot of it

My first MIG was a Machine Mart 135amp 'Turbo Mig' which was perfectly adequate for car panels and chassis, although I'm sure there are better budget options out there now. Use gas rather than gasless. Don't even bother with ARC for car panels. TIG is expensive, hard to master and you won't see any of the benefits on car stuff unless you start doing detailed custom fabrication.

Thin body panels in situ on a car are one of the hardest things to weld! I'd get yourself down to a scrap yard and buy a few old doors to practice on. Or washing machines. Be prepared to melt a lot of holes! There is a fine line between a good penetrating weld and melting a hole. Get a little grinder (I use Hitachi as they are compact, cheap enough and well made) with slitting discs and flap wheels for prepping everything. There will be some good guides on YouTube to get you started.

Good luck! Welding is a great skill to have.

Good tips from Busta!

I got a Kemppi 160 something bought used. Not too expencive i think at approx 200£.. The PSU for the controls failed after a while but parts where easy to find even it is an old machine. Some friends of mine got newer Migatronic and they are very pleased with the machines. Some even got the atuo-settings for the current and materials feed wich sometimes is a pain to get set right with manual controls. Especially when you are not so skilled like me, and use more time to set them than the actual welding..

If i could buy a device that really, really shuts the gas off when i forget to, i would buy it!