FAAC Welding & Fabrication Nationwide

FAAC Welding & Fabrication: The Colleyville Owner’s Guide

When a FAAC gate hinge tears loose, a weld cracks on the gate leaf, or the post mount for your FAAC 400 or FAAC 770 operator fatigues and sags, the fix is not a new opener. It is structural welding and fabrication, done by someone who understands how the FAAC system mounts, aligns, and carries load. In Colleyville, we stock FAAC-compatible mounting plates, gate frame repair steel, and hinge reinforcement components on our trucks, and most welding and fabrication repairs on FAAC gates run between $350 and $1,200 installed, with the exact price quoted and agreed before any work starts. The usual story we hear goes like this: the gate starts dragging, then the operator strains, then the weld that held the lower hinge bracket gives way under the weight. The part did not fail alone. The weld failed because the gate was moving when it should not have been. That is the repair we make, and we make it once.

Call (817) 242-5426

If you are reading this because your FAAC gate is hanging low, grinding, or swinging wide of the receiver, call us at (817) 242-5426. We will give you a straight answer on what actually needs welding, what needs replacing, and what it will cost before we fire up the welder.

Which FAAC Models This Applies To

This work applies to nearly every FAAC gate configuration we see in Colleyville, but the details change by series. The FAAC 400 operators, common on residential swing gates, mount to the gate leaf and post with brackets that take a lot of repeated stress. The FAAC 412 and 415 compact operators have a shorter piston stroke, which means the hinge geometry has to be closer to correct or the operator fights the gate. The FAAC 770, 750, and C720 series drive heavier gates, double leaves, and estate-size panels, and when those gates sag even half an inch, the welds on the lower hinge and the post mount fail first. On slide gates, we often fabricate new rail supports, counterweight brackets, and receiver posts to match the FAAC 844 or 884 operator mounting dimensions.

Here is the compatibility gotcha most owners hit: the hinge bracket bolt pattern is not universal across FAAC lines. A bracket from a 400 series will not line up with a 770 post plate, and if someone longer lag bolts into the old holes to force it, the steel around the holes cracks within a season. Before we weld anything, we measure the leaf weight, the hinge centerline, and the operator stroke. We match steel thickness to the leaf, not to the old broken part, because in Texas heat, a thin-gauge plate will flex and fail within two or three summers. For most FAAC residential gates, we fabricate from 1/4-inch plate steel at minimum, and we use 3/8-inch stock on estate gates and double-leaf setups. OEM brackets are available for many FAAC series, and we use them when the original design is right. But when the original bracket failed, we do not replace it with the identical part and hope for a different outcome. We fabricate a reinforced version that fits the same operator and clears the same throw.

Ironworks Gate Co. is an independent service provider. We are not affiliated with FAAC, and we do not pretend to be. We simply know their equipment well enough to repair it correctly.

Signs Your FAAC Welding & Fabrication Is Failing

• The gate leaf sags visibly at the latch end. This is nearly always a worn hinge or a cracked lower hinge weld. The FAAC operator keeps pushing, the hinge keeps giving, and eventually the weld tears completely.
• The gate drags or scrapes the driveway at the same point every cycle. A dragging gate multiplies the load on the FAAC motor by three or four times. In Colleyville, driveway settling from clay soil makes this worse in summer when the ground dries and shifts.
• The operator pulls away from the gate or post. You can see a gap between the FAAC mounting plate and the gate frame, or the bolts have wallowed out their holes into ovals. The operator is working, but its bracket is not.
• A crack runs along an existing weld bead, with a rust line through it. That rust line tells you the crack has been there for months, breathing open and closed with every cycle. It will not heal. It will only tear further.
• The gate bangs or rattles when the FAAC operator starts and stops. Loose hinge barrels or a broken weld let the gate lurch against the operator’s stroke. The shock loads travel straight into the FAAC gearbox, and that is a much more expensive repair than the weld itself.

None of these issues get better on their own. The heavier the gate, the faster they get worse.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

Most FAAC welding and fabrication jobs in Colleyville land between $350 and $1,200 installed, depending on the scope. Hinge repair or replacement on a single swing gate typically runs $350 to $650. Cracking loose a sagging post, resetting it in fresh concrete, and welding a new FAAC operator mounting plate runs $600 to $1,100. Full leaf reinforcement, where we weld internal steel into the gate frame to fix fatigue cracks and restore the geometry, runs $800 to $1,200 when combined with hinge work.

The price you are quoted is the price you pay. We settle it before any work begins, in writing, and that number does not move unless you add scope after we start. Every job includes the fabrication, the welding, grinding the old broken welds out, painting or priming any exposed steel, and testing the gate under full operator load. And every job carries our 90-Day Done Right Promise: if the weld or the fabrication is not right, we come back and make it right, no paperwork, no arguing.

DIY or Call Us?

There are things you can safely check on a FAAC gate. You can look for visible cracks in the welds, check whether the hinge pins have play, and run the gate manually with the operator released to feel whether it binds or drags. You can tighten a loose bolt if the hole is still round. Those checks cost you nothing and they tell us a lot when you call.

What you should not do is weld it yourself. Gate welding is not general metal repair. The weld has to line up with the FAAC operator stroke, the hinge centerline, and the leaf weight. If the gate is a double-leaf, both leaves have to close square or the operator fault-codes. If it is a slide gate, a bad rail weld can throw the gate off the track entirely. And if the gate is heavy enough to need an estate operator, it is heavy enough to pin a person against a post when a hinge lets go. That is not a scare line. That is a fact. Working under tension with a grinder and a welder on a sagging iron gate is how people get hurt. Victor Salinas has been doing this work in Colleyville for more than twenty years, and he still treats every hung gate like it is waiting for a reason to fall. Call (817) 242-5426 and let us handle the load-bearing side of it.

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