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I welded new caliper mounting brackets to an axle before. no problems at all.

Don't know if it was right or wrong, but I put a wet rag around the tube on the "back side" of where I was welding, to help keep things cool. I placed the rag on, THEN started to weld, so the metal never got "shocked" it did get hot and was hissing the water out of the rag, but I THINK it helped keep heat down on the axle tube itself.


Right or wrong, I put 4,000 miles on that axle with my big block Dakota without any problems, and my buddy is running it in his 318, T-56 Dakota that's his daily driver and has probably 10K miles on it since we put the axle in it last spring.



Actually you would have been better off letting the heat dissipate into the rest of the axle housing. Isolating it with wet rags caused more heat build up in the end of the axle. Probably still no big deal in this case but it could be a factor when welding on something longer or if it were out in the middle of the axle shaft.



the mount pads were about 4" from the end of the tube, and the wet rag was on the outside of the plate, keeping the heat out of the end of the tube. I didn't put anything on the welded side of the flange because I didn't want water cracking/contaminating the welds as they cooled off.

**Photobucket sucks**