My "new" Thermal Arc Predator welder/generator

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Another craigslist find. I wasn't really in the market for an engine-powered welder, but hey, you never have enough tools, right? There was a Craigslist ad for this welder, Thermal Arc Predator, with a trailer, for $400.
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I had to check it out. Went over to the guy's house. He says it needs a starter. Bummer, I can't run it. He assures me it runs fine, says he's used it as an emergency generator once. He says he bought it to learn how to weld on car bodies, and then realized he needed a mig welder. Hm.

Long story short, I bought it. Then he says he has some leads he'll sell me for another $100. I can hardly lift the box, and it has a ground clamp and stinger in there, so I buy that too. There's at least 150' of 1/0 wire in there, as well as some #2. If I stripped it and sold it for scrap, I'd get more than $100.

So I leave the guy's house, and get on the freeway, and boom, flat tire on the trailer. I'm maybe a mile away, so I call to see if he has another tire that I could maybe borrow, or if he can help me out in any way. Nope. You bought it, it's yours.
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OK, he really doesn't owe me any help, but if I were in that situation, I think I'd at least try to do something. Oh well. It hits me that I've really bought a pig in a poke. Fortunately, one of my daughters is available, and comes and gets me a tire from a nearby Discount Tire. I manage to find a jack and wrench and change it. Then I ask her to follow me home. Good thing, because the other tire goes flat about 3 miles from home. Fortunately there's another nearby Discount Tire, and she has time, and I get back on the road again.

The seller told me that he had taken it to a local shop, and they told him the starter was bad, so I order a starter. A week later, the starter arrives, I wire it up, and click. No start. Solenoid is bad, starter was probably good,
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so now I have a spare.

I still haven't found the solenoid locally, but I'm able to start the thing by jumping the positive to the starter. After some carburetor drama, it runs like a dream.

So let's see:
$400 - welder/trailer
$160 - tires
$55 - starter
$100 - welding leads
$35 - adapters to plug the welding leads into the machine

So my $400 welder is now at about $750 and counting, but not only does it work, but it appears to have less than one hour on the clock. I'm guessing that this machine has done a lot of sitting, and no welding. I finally got the leads hooked up today, and ran a bead, and it looks good. It also came with a brand new marine battery from West Marine. It's an enormous battery, and I have no idea why this guy bought it, but it will definitely start a Honda GX620. However, it won't fit in the battery compartment.
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After some perusing of the interwebs, it looks like I could easily get $1800 for it, maybe a little more. For now, I think I'll try to keep it. It will weld up to 270 amps DC, or 300 amps AC, and also does CV if you want to use a wire feeder. It will provide 10,000 watts of 460 3 phase, or 8500 watts of 240/120 single phase. And it's not overly loud.
 
Looks like a good buy if you need a welder/generator. But unless I really needed a portable welder, I would stick to a AC powered one as the last thing I need is another gasoline/diesel/propane engine.
 
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