[Ryder]

Well, you wanted to know how the Chinese welder went. To start with, once is deciphered the excuse for English in the user manual, it went really well. Practiced for 2 hours in the afternoon on scrap - beads on a plate, fillet welds, outside fillet weld all went really nicely, got some pretty good looking welds happening. So I shut it off and went for a few beers.

Came back the next day and tried to use it, and there wasn't enough cleaning action. Kept messing around with the settings and figured out that for some reason the AC balance no longer works. There's no difference at all between max and min settings, and it's not burning through the oxide anymore. Can't even get it to do beads on a plate...

So, looks like it's going to get sent back for a refund. Starting to agree with the people who say that AC tigs cost several thousand dollars for a reason...

Kinda puts a pause on the tank now. I can't justify to the wife buying a proper AC tig, and I'm not buying another cheapie. It seems I've got a choice between sending the tank off for welding or making it out of steel. At least the ally I bought was DIRT cheap, paid $50 for a 2400 x1200 x 3 sheet, and it was worth 3 times that. Can probably recycle most of it into heaps of different things on the car if I go for a steel tank.