Mig Welder repairman out there?

Yesterday I took the front foot floorboard with the gas pedal out of my 64 to "rework" the already "jury-rigged" accelerator cable attachment bracket. I decided to make a new bracket from scatch and needed to mig a couple of pcs of metal.

I havent used the welder since last fall. It was acting very wierd...here's the scoop.... Its an older Solar (Century) model 2-175, 220volt. It is probably at least 25yrs old.

When I started to weld the wire feed wouldnt work from the gun switch, but would when I pushed the manual feed button on the control panel. I actually did weld a very short time by using the gun trigger to start the transformer,while pushing the manual wire feed button to activate the wire.... btw, not an easy task LOL..

OK, gotta be a bad switch or wire in the torch whip? Nope, I pulled the switch and jumped it.. nothing. Then I unplugged the gun inside the welder, jumped the terminals on the welder side, still nothing.


The really wierd thing is while I was away from the welder, the transformer would start and stop by itself a couple of times, almost like a cicuit breaker turning on and off. BTW, This transormer should only start when the trigger on the gun is pulled....


Any idea where to look next? A new welder is not in the budget right now...