FAAC Welding & Fabrication Nationwide

FAAC Welding & Fabrication: The Pasadena Owner’s Guide

Most FAAC welding and fabrication work in Pasadena comes down to a cracked hinge bracket, a sheared gate leaf, or a bent operator mounting plate that’s been slowly failing for months. We stock FAAC-compatible steel and aluminum components and typically install welded repairs and fabricated brackets for $280 to $680 depending on the extent of the damage and whether we’re working on a swing arm, slide gate, or operator post. What you’ll usually notice first is a gate that sags toward the latch side, scrapes the driveway, or shakes when the FAAC motor cycles it open and closed.

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The part that fails is almost never the motor itself. It’s the metal around it. After enough cycles, the weld at the hinge pin lets go, or the bracket that connects the FAAC piston to the gate leaf cracks right at the bolted joint. Cole Rafferty has pulled apart enough FAAC installations across Pasadena to know that most weld failures trace back to a gate that was never properly reinforced for the torque the operator applies every single cycle.

Which FAAC Models This Applies To

We fabricate and weld for the full FAAC lineup you’re likely to find on a Pasadena property: the 400 Series swing operators (415, 402), 700 Series hydraulic operators (740, 750, 770), and the S800H and C720 slide gate lines. Each series has its own mounting geometry, and that matters more than most homeowners realize. The FAAC 415 uses a shorter stroke piston than the 750, which means the bracket plate on the gate leaf sits at a different angle and takes different stress when the gate reaches full open or closed. Weld a 415-style bracket onto a gate being driven by a 750, and you’ll be back in the same spot within a year.

The fastest way to identify what you’re working with is to check the metal tag on the operator body. FAAC stamps the model and serial number onto a small aluminum plate, usually on the underside or the side facing away from the gate opening. If that tag has weathered away (common on coastal-adjacent Pasadena homes that see morning fog and afternoon sun), measure the piston stroke. The 402 runs about 11 inches, the 415 about 14. That measurement tells us which bracket and hinge reinforcement your gate needs, and it keeps the welding work matched to the operator so the repair actually holds.

On the OEM versus aftermarket decision: FAAC’s own hinge brackets and mounting plates are well made, but for welding work specifically, we fabricate our own in-house using 3/16-inch mild steel plate for residential gates and 1/4-inch plate for heavier wrought-iron or steel-rail gates. FAAC doesn’t sell weld-in reinforcement kits for every failure pattern we see, so custom fabrication from heavier-gauge stock often outlasts the original hardware on the second go-round.

Signs Your FAAC Welding & Fabrication Is Failing

• The gate sags visibly toward the latch side. A cracked or stretched hinge weld lets the leaf drop, so the gap between the two gate halves widens at the top and narrows at the bottom. The hinge is taking load it wasn’t built for, which means the crack is growing every cycle.
• The FAAC operator shudders or grinds mid-stroke. When a mounting bracket cracks, the piston doesn’t push squarely into the gate leaf. The motor strains against a slightly off-axis load, which wears out the internal gears faster and makes the gate shake as it moves.
• Fresh rust-colored dust or flakes under the hinge area. That’s fretting corrosion from two steel surfaces rubbing under load. It means a weld has broken internally and the two sides are moving against each other microscopically. The crack is there, even if you can’t see it without pulling the leaf.
• The gate bounces or rattles right after the FAAC operator reaches full open or closed. The leaf should stop dead and hold. If it bounces, the stop bracket or the operator mounting plate has lost structural stiffness, usually from a broken weld at the base.
• You can move the gate leaf by hand even with the FAAC motor engaged. A properly welded hinge and bracket assembly should feel rigid. If there’s play, something in the chain of welds from post to hinge to leaf has failed.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

In Pasadena, most FAAC welding and fabrication work falls into these ranges:

• Hinge reinforcement or weld repair (single hinge, no replacement parts): $180 to $320
• Bracket fabrication and installation (operator-to-gate connection): $220 to $380
• Full gate leaf re-weld with gusset plates (sag correction): $380 to $680
• Steel tube or rail replacement welded into an existing gate frame: $300 to $550 depending on section length

Every one of those numbers includes the labor, the steel or aluminum, the grinding and cleanup of the old weld, and a written price you approve before we strike the first arc. We don’t do per-hour billing on weld work. Cole quotes the job, not the clock. If the fix requires the gate to come off its hinges for bench work, that’s included too, along with rehanging and realigning the FAAC operator so the piston stroke runs true.

All welded repairs carry the 365-Day Done Right Promise in writing. If that weld cracks or the bracket shifts within a year, we come back and make it right at no charge. No fine print, no prorating. You call, we show up, we fix it.

DIY or Call Us?

You can safely check the obvious things: look for visible cracks at the hinge welds, run your hand along the bracket edges for sharp fractures (with the gate unplugged from power), and note whether the leaf sags when it’s at rest. What you shouldn’t do is attempt to weld a load-bearing hinge or operator bracket yourself unless you have real MIG or stick experience and understand root passes and penetration for structural steel. A weld that looks fine on the surface but lacks penetration will snap clean under the repeated torque of a FAAC 750, and a gate leaf that lets go can hurt someone. Badly. This is one repair where a cosmetic-looking bead is worse than no bead at all, because it gives false confidence.

If the thought of dropping your gate off its hinges and burning steel doesn’t sound like a good Saturday, call us at (626) 657-5425 and we’ll get you a written price. Tell me what it’s doing wrong, and I’ll tell you exactly what it costs to fix it before I touch a thing.

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