Fixing a Broken Oil Filter Wrench

When I was down at Tom Shaughnessy's buying the PF coupe, I was also looking at some original tools.  As you probably know, I make reproduction oil filter wrenches.  One of Tom's wrenches had been used and broken.  Evidently the spot weld holding the end of the strap came loose and someone kept using the wrench until the end by the rivet in the handle broke off.  Here you can see the broken wrench (lower one) along with one of my reproductions.

When I first looked at the broken wrench, I didn't give it much thought once I realized that it was broken rather than having something pulled apart.  Later, I figured out that I could make a new end (using the same jig used for the reproductions) and then weld that onto the strap.  You can see the new end to the right of the wrenches in the picture above.

That was the easy part.  Getting it welded and everything back together was the hard part.  First I cut both ends off where I wanted to make the weld and trued each one to the other.  I had my neighbor Mike use his TIG welder to butt join the two together.  Due to the loop for the rivet, it wasn't possible to weld both sides.  The first time the weld failed when I was trying to get the strap bent back into the correct diameter.  The second and third times the weld broke when trying to slip the end around the rivet.  As I don't have exact original rivets, I had to leave the rivet in place and fit the new end around it.  Finally, Mike really turned up the heat and tried to have the butt joint weld penetrate completely through from the one side.  Of course the higher heat pulls more metal away from the material, so Mike had to go back and (at a lower temperature) add rod to fill in the low spots.  This time the weld held and I was able to slip the end over the rivet.  The last step was to close the loop and weld it to the strap.  Here you can see the final result.

Now I'll just have to have it plated the next I have a batch of cadmium plating done.  Then I'll have an almost original oil filter wrench.