Why not Russ, we are not talking a fulltimer but a back yarder most likely only welding once in a blue moon on his own car.

I thought the idea of the gas was to keep it tidy, wont it be messy with out the gas?

Because I've never seen anybody make a nice job of welding with a cheap gassless set. I've seen nice submerged arc welding, and even relatively good flux cored welding on site with a decent set and very expensive wire, but I've never ever seen a good result from a cheap shitty gasless hobby set.

When learning how to do something, having the best tools you can will help immensly. If you tried to rebuild a 2cv using a cheap set of chinese spanners you'd give up pretty quickly, or it'd damage your confidence. It's exactly the same scenario with a welder as any other tool.

My shite Clarke set cost me £200 about 6 years ago. It's safe to say it will put down welds that look a million times better than a £100 gasless set will, but also, it's effectively useless compared to the £1300 welder I use at work.

If it were my money, and I were buying a set to teach somebody with, I'd buy a good quality used set as I (and Sean) suggested.

Also, I've been able to fracture and break welds done with a gasless set much, much easier than I could have with a conventional set up.

I made a downpipe for a 200TDi engine conversion (fitting a Discovery engine) into a Land Rover Defender using my mates gasless mig, it was feckin' horrible to use. I really wish I'd gone home and fetched my Sealey which I absolutely loathed!!!

Although it all held perfectly well, it took at least twice as long to do as it would've with my welder and it looked bloody terrible.

Also, I got really bad weldburn-kind of my own fault for just wearing a T-shirt but I've not suffered as badly with my welder.

I've now got a fairly big/powerful Sealey "TurboMig" (which I have to say is great but it was bloody expensive) but started out with a £50 Clarke and pub bottles which (sorry Russ) I loved until I could afford something decent.

Fair enough Russ, yes it looks better and maybe holds better. Never lost a welding spot so fare. For the last 10 years I've only used Italian made gassless welder on 100's of 2cv down under and now here in France. I have no problems what so ever except its not pretty but the grinder takes care of that.

I suspect if all I'd used was a gasless, I'd probably swear by it to be honest-I think once you're used to a welder, that's kind of just about it really.

Of course there are the gas/gasless ones you can get......................

Well I'm happy with it, don't swear by it more at it. When the gut is hanging out of it, I will for sure ''upgrade'' to gas, no doubt about that. I just can't see how a back yarder can afford bottle hire etc etc for casual welding adventure

I must confess that I just use CO2 with mine and the bottle hire is about £15 or so and a bottle will last about a year and I'm not exactly what you call light use!

I'm guessing bottle hire is rather expensive over there Viking? Get yourself down the pub and see if you can walk off with one of their CO2 bottles!

We looked at buying new even used bottle, forget it. Hiring is not cheap but will eventually go for it + new MIG's cost and arm and a leg. So used it will be, don't know what brand but will ask here when time come. Well the local pub in our little village is nothing but num-nuts, won't go there.