Welcome to the forum, Metalworker. My Spanish is marginal, learned of necessity on jobs in South America almost 30 years ago, so I will stick to English.
I always liked the magneto ignitions. Something reassuring about not having to place reliance upon a battery to make spark. I have an old Gravely "L" two-wheel tractor with the Wico magneto, and it just fires up and runs whether I am blowign snow in winter or bush-hoggin in summer. I have a 6 HP Wisconsin built in 1948 I used on a Quincy compressor. It also has the Wico mag. Started like a shot. My buddy has a 1939 John Deere tractor, the 2 cylinder "popper". It has the Wico magnetor. You start it by heaving on the flywheel. It has a TDC mark cast right on the flywheel so you can get the crankshaft pre-positioned before you heave the flywheel. It starts quite easily.
I have not seen a Hobart welder like yours in many years. A neighbor had borrowed one for a repair job and asked me to help him out. That has to be 25 years ago. It was the same machine you have. It was on a steel-wheeled undercarriage, and was a heavy thing to move around. I crank started it OK and burned plenty of E 7018 electrode with it to modify a truck snowplow and subframe, then run some hard-facing rod on the cutting edge.
I think the carburetor was kind of sloppy, dripping raw gasoline, but otherwise it was a good running welding machine and held the heat fine.
As I mentioned, I had worked some engine erecting jobs in South America. One thing I learned quickly was to always make sure to get a welding machine which could be crank started. Batteries never seemed to last. Mostly, we had the old classic Lincoln welding machines with the Continental Red Seal Engines. These had magneto ignitions, and could be started by crank or electric starter. We used to crank start them.
On my last overseas job in Paraguay, we had one of the Lincoln welders (SA model ?) with the Red Seal Engine and magneto. We were doing alot of piping and structural welding, so needed a second welding power supply. We were about 100 miles from any paved road, so finding anything like another welder was none too easy. A landowner had a welder to rent. It was a home-made job. It consisted of a flat deck trailer with Brazilian built welding generator and a Brazilian-built air-cooled diesel engine. The diesel engine was a Deutz design. It was belted to the welding generator. The welding generator had an open cntrol box with a rheostat and reactance right out in the open air. The local Paraguayans knew how to get the diesel started as it was of a type they used on water pumps and generators. Starting in the mornings was a two-man job. One guy took a rag and twisted some steel baling wire around it. He dunked it in diesel fuel and lit it. The burning oil rag was held alongside the air cleaner, and the same guy held the compression release open. The other guy hand cranked the engine. Whe it seemed to be rolling fast enough, the crank was pulled free and the compression release closed. If the engine fired and ran, it was kept running all day.
There were no markings on the controls for the welding generator, so you ran some trial weld to get your heat set. I ran some E 6010 on open root welds and E 7018 and that crude welded ran just fine. We welded steam lines for a sawmill powerplant with that home-made welder and the old Lincoln. Without a bunch of fancy modern digital systems, those welders made good welds. I know what sound welding for piping has to be, and that crude welding machine held the heat and maintained a good arc, and made sound weld.
Your Hobart welder is one of those oldtimers. Millions of miles of weld must've been laid down by those old style welding machines with welders running stick electrode. Plenty of that weld "passed X ray" and is still holding just fine. It's a rugged old machine that will keep right on going with reasonable care.
Those same 2 cylinder Wisconsin engines were also used on hay balers. Early tractors had no PTO, so hay balers were offered with engine drive. The hay baler engines had a handwheel on the end of the crankshaft. You crossed your arms and gave a wrenching motion to the handwheel to start the Wisconsin engine on a haybaler. The trick was to turn the engine over slowly, find TDC ahead of time.
Hobart used to sell the same welding generator as used on your machine. The idea was that a person could then drive the welding generator with whatever they had available such as an old car engine or tractor power takeoff. Hobart also made a version which consisted of a Willys Jeep with a PTO drive belted up to a Hobart welding generator mounted on the rear bed of the Jeep. I only remember seeing catalog pictures of this when I was a kid. Basically, the same welding generator as used on your machine was mounted on the bed of a Jeep. The idea was a self-propelled welding outfit that could be driven right to the job.
The biggest engine I ever crank-started was a LeRoi. It was a 4 cylinder engine on a 40 Kw generator. 476 cubic inches, dual systems: magneto ignition as well as coil and points. It was a WII US Army Signal Corps genset, used for emergency power in a hydroelectric plant. I used to start that engine once a week to make sure it would fire when needed. That engine was on a skid with the crank barely skimming the floor at 6:00 position. I'd pull it over maybe two turns with the magneto "cold" and choke on full. I'd postion the crank so it was set Half choke, magneto "hot". The crank was set so pushing it down from about the 4:00 position would kick the engine over. I'd put the arch of my boot on the crank handle and give it a hard kick. The LeRoi engine would fire right up. I had tried pulling up on the crank with my thumbs tucked in, and never could get it to fire off. Kicking down on the crank did the trick. I suppose if that engine had kicked back, I would have gone flying backwards.
I know that as a young engineer on powerplant work, all we had were generator type welding power supplies. Some motor-generator, some engine driven. We did SMAW and we did TIG welding with them. I enjoyed listening to the sounds of the engines on the welders picking up load. You could tell a good welder by the smoothness of the engine under load as he held a good arc.
Nowadays everything is much more complex and little, if anything can be hand-started. When the digital welding equipment works properly, it is amazing, but when it fails, it is done. The old welding power supplies were simple, rugged, and a person could repair them int he field in most cases. I know you laid a nice paint-job on your Hobart welding machine, but it would be fun to go burn some rod with it.
Joe Michaels
Jim
