did you normalize or anneal the cold rolled steel after welding? did you use tig or mig to weld?

the reason i ask, is because cold rolled steel will have a brittle heat affected zone after welding... will be worse with tig welding. Would be a good idea to heat up the plate with a torch to the point where it just starts to get orange/brown. Then let it cool down slowly. That way the steel will have the same crystal structure throughout. Just a recommendation… you really don’t want a brittle failure of the parts that holds your axle on

of course im use to welding steel tubing that is .035” thick which becomes very brittle because it cools down so quickly. Only had problems when we did not normalize.