Category: News

“News” pretty much explains it.

Dear Welder Series… will your triangulated four link lay frame?

Dear Welder Series…
With your triangulated four link does this allow the truck or the vehicle to lay flat on the ground in the rear with the air bags deflated?

Dear Brian…
Hi Brian, thanks for your note. This would depend on where you establish the ride height when you’re setting up the suspension. It will also depend on a few other factors; axle to frame rail clearance, shock travel, and whether or not there is anything else that might get in the way of the vehicle and the ground. So I suppose I should answer your question something like this: “yes, BUT…”.
I hope this helps…
DW Horton

What’s With the Saran Wrap?

Nobody’s asked this question but I think about it every time I wrap some parts up to ship. I go through a fair amount of plastic stretch wrap. My logic is that it’ll be more difficult for a bundle of parts or plates to slide out of a damaged box than one plate at a time.
So that’s the story of the plastic wrap. No, I didn’t have a deli sandwich for lunch and use the Saran Wrap for your parts.

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Where We’re Headed (this summer) (not a philosophical post)

No, where are you headed, man?

Once again, we’re going to Syracuse and Louisville this year (with a smattering of other spur of the moment destinations in between). Yup, we’re pretty predictable.

Syracuse is always a bunch of fun… lots of things to do for the whole family, live music through the day, great tech seminars and lots more. Here’s the link for the show if you’re on the fence: http://rightcoastcars.com/syracuse-nationals.php

We really enjoy Louisville too, and this year shouldn’t be any different. I’ve been riding a little BMX bike at the Hot Rod Industry BMX Challenge that Tim and Carrie Strange put on every year… what a blast! Here’s the link to the Louisville show: http://www.nsra-usa.com/Events/default.asp#. You’ll have to scroll over to get to the info for the show. Here are some pictures from BMX Challenges past: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.368982859832912.85490.368921386505726&type=3

Syracuse: July 19-21
Louisville: August 1-4

Also, Paul and Dorothy will be driving the ’40 this year and I’ll take the ’32! The ’40 has been on the road since 1988, but has been parked since 2005.

Hope to see you there!

Dear Welder Series… Do You Make Your Own Stuff?

This isn’t really a Dear Welder Series post, but more of a “Dear Customer…” post.

Some events of late made me think about a few questions people may develop as they browse chassis brackets on the Internet. While I’m certainly not naive to think that there aren’t other companies making similar products, or even that they shouldn’t be, I do want to clarify a few things.

First, if you notice a picture on another site that looks uncannily like a picture of a product on our website, that’s a Welder Series picture. I’ve personally taken every product picture on the site, except the customer-submitted pictures. We keep an up to date list of reputable businesses selling Welder Series product here. If the site isn’t on the list, but they’re using our images, ask where the part comes from. A number of shops buy our products and sell or install them as such. There’s no shame in asking where the part comes from. If they can’t say it’s from Welder Series, but they’re using our image to (mis)represent the product, that doesn’t seem fair to me or you. There are some sites selling genuine Welder Series products, but there are some who aren’t but are still using our images.

Second, with a very small number of exceptions (I’ll list them below), every product sold on our website is a Welder Series product. What does that mean? It means the CAD drawings originated on our computer, the steel is to the best of our ability sourced from Canada or the USA, and it was welded in our shop. If I wouldn’t put it on my car, I won’t send it to you. It’s that simple. I’m pretty picky, too.
Here are the parts that are not manufactured by us:

Rod Ends.
Engine mount insulators
Transmission insulators.
Urethane bushing halves.
Hardware (including weld nuts, Nutserts, bolts, nuts, etc.)
Exhaust grommets.

Every tig weld that leaves here will look like this:

I don’t want to come off sounding like we’re the only place you can buy quality hot rod chassis parts. Of course there are a number of companies producing quality products. What irks me is when our photos are used to misrepresent the quality of another company’s product.

If you have any questions about our products, we’d like to hear from you.

Thanks very much for your time.
DW, Paul, and Dorothy Horton

Search & Restore Reveals Hudson Hornet This Weekend!

PRESS RELEASE
Tim Strange Announces Season 2 Episode 3 of Search and Restore
Franklin TN, November 14, 2012: The focus of Search and Restore is on finding the family treasures and lost causes, ringing them all back to life. From coast to coast, host Tim Strange, and volunteer teams of pros will donate their time restoring rides nationwide to those worthy of a helping hand. Search & Restore is not just a show for automotive enthusiasts, but a great show that dad can watch with his family – there is a story and best of all NO DRAMA.
Tim Strange, award-winning rod builder, BMXer and owner of Strange Motion is the host and Lead Builder of Search and Restore. “The show is a feel-good, give back type of show,” said Strange. “We build projects for deserving people with touching or hard-luck stories. Each project we build gets four half-hour shows. We build four projects each season so there will be 16 episodes.” “There’s no better feeling than helping someone regain that sense of hope after they feel like they’ve lost everything,” Strange said. “Thanks to our volunteer build teams and the hosts of the other PowerBlock shows, we’re able to help someone pick up the pieces, turn a dream into a reality and have fun doing it.”
November 17, 2012 @ 8 AM CST SPIKE TV will run the third build of season two of Search and Restore. It will run as a two hour special, you will see the beginning and end of the build. On Sunday November 18, 2012 @ 8 AM SPIKE TV will do a rerun of Saturday’s show. The third build of the season, we travel just outside Detroit, Michigan to rescue a dream, grant a
daughter’s wish, and to restore some pride in a PowerBlock viewer who spends these days managing his pain, and taking care of his elderly parents.
After receiving nearly 200,000 submissions from viewers, Search and Restore is PowerBlock’s answer to ignite hope back into the lives of those in need of a helping hand. Search and Restore is not a “How to” show, like the other PowerBlock shows.

Tim Strange leads a volunteer crew to build this Hudson for a deserving family.

Dear Welder Series… Model A IFS Question

Dear Welder Series…
Please tell me the difference between the welded and non-welded model A ifs kit. Is the welded kit ready to be welded to my frame? Thanks, Robert

Dear Robert…
Yes, Robert, the welded kit is ready to weld to your frame. Classic Rods & More has a good video of the installation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdi0B4fr5Sk. The fender braces have to be reworked but the fenders do not have to be “bubbled”.

The “non-welded” kit includes all of the components used in the crossmember and upper towers, but does not have any welding done when you receive it.

Rad mounts are included with the kit. These are to be welded to a boxed section of frame rail.

Thanks for looking at Welder Series parts.

 

Canada Day Hours…

This Monday, most people north of the 49th parallel celebrate Canada Day. What’s Canada Day? Here’s the article from the smart people over at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Day. Basically, it’s when Canada became Canada. Who came up with the name? Probably the same person who named the Fourth of July. Let’s be consistent and call every holiday by the day on which it falls. Christmas will be the Twenty-Fifth of December, April Fools day will be the First of April, etc.

After all that, we’ll be closed on Monday. Hope you all have a great Fourth of July!

Paul, Dorothy, and DW Horton
Welder Series Inc.

Summer Show Schedule

For the past umpteen years, we’ve been attending two shows with our display: the Syracuse Nationals (in Syracuse), and the NSRA Street Rod Nationals Plus in Louisville. This year, we’ll also attend those two shows. If you stop by our usual booth location though, you will notice something different. No, Paul didn’t dye his hair. Guess again. Nope- we didn’t get one of those tractor trailers with the “not for hire” sticker on the window. The only thing that’s changed is whose display is in that spot- it’s not ours! After a lot of discussion, we’ve decided to relinquish our vendor spots and attend the shows in the ’32 as participants.

Maintaining the display will take away a lot of production and shipping time (we are, after all, in the hot rod chassis parts business), and Paul and Dorothy are getting to the point that they no longer want to stand in the same place for a few days. Since his name is on the door, if he wants to walk, let the man walk. I benefit as well, since my wife and children will probably come to Louisville with me to hang out and participate. We’ll get to roam and check out cars together!

All three of us enjoy talking with everyone who stops in to the booth, so that’s definitely a down side. Even though we won’t have a display, we’ll still enjoy talking with people around the fairgrounds. I’ll be updating our Facebook page from the show as well.

I realize I didn’t need to explain all that, but I wanted to convey the point that business is going well and this is a decision which we didn’t make lightly. For a family business, deciding how you spend your time is key. We want to keep our business sharply focused on getting high quality parts out the door quickly, and this is one way we feel we’re deliberately maintaining that focus.

I’m interested to hear your feedback.

Bracket Compar-O: Why Welder Series?

We’ve spent a good deal of energy focusing on quality parts… quality steel, quality laser cuts, quality machining, and especially quality welding. When we see parts installed at a show, we can pretty much always tell if they’re Welder Series parts based on the weld and edge quality. That said, when a customer came in with a set of four bar brackets that he thought were ours, it didn’t take too much inspection to determine that they didn’t come from our shop.

I wanted to point out some of the features that a Welder Series bracket has versus this similar (but different) bracket.

Hole is generally circular but not round, edges are bumpy.
Edges aren’t perpendicular to sides of plate, not smooth.
Hole isn’t round (stop-start point for the plasma cutter).
Barely noticeable stop-start mark (laser cut), high edge quality, defined tig bead.
Hole is round and circular.