Rotted axle tubes.

One of the rear axle tubes on mi series looks as though its substantially rotted, I'd say about 3mm down, and its right up against the diff (salisbury), I remembered a long time back welding on a piece of tube to a classic rear axle for the mot, is this still an acceptable practice for the mot?.
Would there be an issue if I welded a plate to both the axle tube and the diff outer casing?, as the tube has rotted right up against the diff housing.

Thanks.

I wander what the diff housing on a Salisbury axle is made from? If it's cast Iron then if you weld it it's likely to crack.

I think it probably is cast, I have some dissimilar metal rods that will weld steel to cast, if I was to pre heat the diff housing with a gas axe first I might get way with it, another trick some old fart showed me was to tap the cast with a 4 oz hammer whilst its cooling down, done this a few times here on old obsolete machine brake shoes.
If I patch the tube and dont weld the side butted up against the diff I'm gonna get a failiure, unless I bodge it and weld the the patch on with a gap between it and the diff and build up the area inbetween with weld.

fenby1976 said:

I wander what the diff housing on a Salisbury axle is made from? If it's cast Iron then if you weld it it's likely to crack.

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Not if you give it a little "sympathetic" pre AND post heat and use a dissimilar electrode.

Not sure why welding an axle case should affect an MoT

Never done post heating, wanna tell me a bit more wes?.

dr pepper said:

Never done post heating, wanna tell me a bit more wes?.

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Invariabley, dissimilar materials sometimes crack cos they cool to quickly or cos the castings a minger and ****e. A bit of post heat (gradually decreased) should do the trick if the casting is good.

It's a trick we used in fabrication particularly with materials like Chrome Moly (Chromium Molibdenum) when the jobs been welded we used to keep em warm with huge industrial electric blankets for a while.