I also have a fair amount of redundancy built in. I am a farmer, I am a welder by trade but this has taken over my time. I rarely hang out the shingle anymore but on occasion someone finds me. This has been a while but a guy calls, asks what I get an hour, at the time it was 50 or 60. Well he haws a min and says something to that effect,,, well,,, its something I could do in a couple 3 hrs if I was home, etc, its like a broken piece on boat trailer hitch but he is out of town so he finds his way over. First he says,,, oh,,, I figured more backyard than this, in 45 minutes I bill him the hour and 2 bucks for a used bolt, actually seemed kind of pissed.
There are a good share in somfacetet of this industry in one form or another, often it seems to involve "a laid off welder" from somewhere that are no bargain no matter what you pay them and I know some part timers handyman DIY types as good as any of us, they usualldon'tnt have the extensive tooling,,, well,, neither do. Most missed the out of position stick class. Don't usually have a grinder it seems to get a booger or gob of rust out of the way or "its hard to do" no ****. Had a customer thought I would do a "temp repair" like the last guy did,,, or,, the last guy didn'tnt grind that off. Not only cant they weld like we can they cant cut and figure out how to make the grinder do what it will.
The one that says hose weld should have been first and the pic doesnt do the headroom justice, about 6 inches, to reach it had to be sideways and squeeze in at full arms length. I cleaned a little with a scaler and with a torch, no deal for grinding, I might have tried to pencil wire some, dont recall but it was over old repair where the guy had the right idea, even got some pieces clips tacked up in place till he figured he couldnt weld them in. At first the guy wants to reman etc this thing,,, ends up parked anyway like I figuredbut I reach in for a couple hrs and just weld over ****. fed arm thru the hoses, I didnt want to take it all apart and even then still couldnt reach it. Rust salt dirt in every crack. It was going right back to the dirt, didnt bother chipping slag but I knew it would work till it was retired.
It actually worked for the life of the unit, never pulled apart again. The original repair had the right idea, the guy just welded a couple easy pieces he could get at and skipped the rest. kind of like welding half way around the pipe and wonder why it don't hold water.