[mrblaine]

I see a fair bit of concern from people over whether or not to trust welds in critical situations.

My question is whether or not you would risk injury or death in situations where it is only a weld making the difference?

On nearly every rig that wheels or travels down the highway and especially those with aftermarket axle housings, there are a pair of welds that will most certainly cause some sort of catastrophe in the event of their failure. Not only that, but they are operating in the worst of conditions as far as welds go.

The stresses are highly dynamic, the loads vary from torsional, to shear, to straight pull all at the same time and the leverage against the weld is tremendous.

One of these welds has to resist the force of 200 plus pounds smacking into stuff at 60 mph and leveraged against it.

Would you trust your family to this weld?

btw-very often it is just a butt weld with not much special about it. Personally, I have never heard of one failing and there are hundreds of thousands of them out there. Generally, there are four of them on a rig, all with the same potential for catastrophe.