The wire feed can give problems if it is dirty, or the liner is worn, or the drive wheels are worn or improperly set, even cheap no name brand wire can be troublesome due to inconsistancy in the way the wire is drawn. If this was your machine rather than your freind's you could trouble shoot it and solve your feed problems. Tig is slower due to hand feeding the filler, but thinner materials are possible, but the Tig machine will cost you, up front to get set up, over a small Mig set up. You should go to a welding supply house and tryout the equipment you are interested in and see first hand which suits you better for what you want to do.
John Wright

Actually tig machines are generally capable of stick welding also so if it suits your purpose you could dispose of whatever stick hardware you now have. Nothing about a tig machine requires you to have a mig although if that is your choice you will find lots of uses for the mig.
Bill

I've noticed with 115 mig welders the metal transfer always changes, and the wires speed also changes when arc is struck. It's a pain but for body work you mostly just be tacking. Its hard to get production out of one, well thats my problems anyway.

Years ago, I bought myself a really cheap 115V-capable MIG with 130amp capability that was made by some company in Italy. (they are badged differently in different areas). I have fought with that pile of junk over the years. I tried to do bodywork with it a few times, but never did have much luck with it. I found it useful to do odd jobs like blasting tie-cleats onto trailers and basic utility work like that, but as someone else mentioned to be wary of... the wire feeding machanism in it is the absolute s _ _ ts, and makes for totally unreliable operation. It left me wondering if it was my fault because of something I was doing, or if it was the machine's fault for making everything look like crap...

A few years after that, my brother bought a Lincoln SP175 mahcine, and I got a chance to use it. Woah!!! What a difference!!! I can finally say it was [u]NOT[/u] me, and it really was my crappy machine's design problems and inconsistencies that made for such difficulty in trying to fuse together metal. I vowed to get a Lincoln MIG machine sometime in the future.

A while after that, I talked about all of it with a friend who is the welding shop manager/foreman/supervisor at a very large fabrication facility in my area. He said they prefer:
* Miller TIG machines - they like the arc stability, but he couldn't say why, just something about the Miller machines was preferred by the guys doing the welding. He ended up buying a Aerowave for his own home shop, that would sit beside the Syncrowave250 he already had (don't ask!!!)
* Lincoln MIG machines - he said the Lincoln feed mechanism is so much more robust than eveyone else's that is a "no contest" when put up against everyone else's MIG machines. Maybe the newer Miller boxes and better than they used to be, but you have to check that out for yourself.

I bought myself a Miller TIG, not because of what my friend said, but because a fantastic legitimate deal presented itself to me, and I was able to complete the sale with a clear conscience knowing that it was a legitimate sale.

I plan on buying a Lincoln MIG machine in the future based on my own experiences. I would by a SP175plus, unless the money allowed for a proper high duty cycle 250-class machine, then I'd reinvestigate Miller vs. Lincoln again.

...just some info to think about from another guy melting metal...