FAAC Welding & Fabrication Nationwide | Gatewood Fence & Gate

FAAC Welding & Fabrication: The Fort Worth Owner’s Guide

We stock FAAC mounting plates, hinge assemblies, and operator brackets on our trucks and weld them on site same day in most Fort Worth neighborhoods. Typical installed cost runs $250 to $540 depending on whether we’re repairing a cracked hinge, rebuilding a post mount, or fabricating a custom operator bracket from scratch. Most owners find out this part failed the hard way: the gate starts dragging on one corner, the opener groans like it’s lifting double its rated weight, or you spot a hairline crack running through a weld that was never properly gusseted in the first place.

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Which FAAC Models This Applies To

This covers the full FAAC swing gate lineup we see around Fort Worth: the 400, 402, 412, 415, and 760 series operators, plus the S418 and 391 slide gate units. The welding point is almost never the motor itself. It’s the mounting plate the motor bolts to, the hinge ears on the gate frame, or the bracket that ties the piston arm to the gate leaf. FAAC’s Italian engineering is solid, but the mounting hardware is sized for European gate frames, which are typically lighter than what Texas gate builders hang. If your gate leaf is 14 feet of ornamental steel, the factory bracket is being asked to do work it was never spec’d for. To identify what’s on your gate, look for the FAAC badge on the operator body and the model number stamped into the underside of the housing. Take a photo of it before you call us. It saves a trip.

One thing we tell every FAAC owner: stick with OEM or equivalent-grade aftermarket mounting hardware. There are cheap bracket kits floating around online that look identical in the photo but are stamped from 14-gauge steel instead of the 10-gauge FAAC uses. They flex under load, the flex kills the weld over time, and you’re back where you started in eighteen months. We keep both OEM FAAC brackets and a local Fort Worth fabricator’s version that’s cut from the same thickness and pattern, matched to the specific model. You’ll know which one you’re getting and why before we weld anything.

Signs Your FAAC Welding & Fabrication Is Failing

• The gate sags visibly on the latch end, but the hinges look tight. What’s actually happening is the hinge weld is cracking at the post face, letting the whole leaf drop a fraction of an inch. You won’t see the crack until we grind the paint off, but the sag is the tell.
• The operator makes a sharp popping sound right as it starts to move. That’s a mounting bracket shifting against a partially failed weld. Each cycle works the crack a little wider.
• You can see rust staining running down from any welded joint. Water gets into the hairline, oxidation builds, and the rust line is the weld telling you it’s been compromised. This is a big one in Fort Worth, where the freeze-thaw cycle in winter and the humidity in August work on every exposed weld joint.
• The gate leaf flexes or wobbles when you push it by hand at the midpoint. A properly mounted FAAC leaf is rigid. If it moves, the problem is almost always at the hinge ears or the operator bracket, not the frame itself.
• The leaf stops one to two inches short of fully closed, every time. A failing mount changes the pivot geometry just enough that the limit switches can’t reach the same position they used to. It’s not a limit switch problem. It’s metal fatigue.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

In Fort Worth, most FAAC welding and fabrication jobs fall between $250 and $540 installed. A cracked hinge re-weld with reinforcement gusseting runs toward the lower end. Rebuilding a post mount that’s rusted out at the base, or fabricating a custom operator bracket for an unusual gate configuration, pushes toward the higher end. The spread depends on how much steel has to be cut away, whether we need to field-fabricate a piece, and how long the welder needs to run.

Every quote we give includes the part, the labor, and the welding consumables. You get one number before we start, and the price is agreed before any work happens. No surprises in the invoice. The work itself carries our 90-Day Done Right Promise in writing, and we don’t hide behind fine print. If something isn’t right, Hal Gatewood comes back and makes it right.

DIY or Call Us?

You can safely check the obvious: look for visible cracks, rust runs, and sag, and listen for that popping sound on startup. That diagnosis is free, and it helps you describe the problem when you call. But the actual welding? That’s the line we draw. This is not a job for a hardware store flux-core welder and a YouTube video. The hinge and bracket joints on a FAAC gate are load-bearing points under constant dynamic stress from the motor. A cold weld or a bad penetration on a gate leaf that weighs 400-plus pounds can fail catastrophically, and a gate falling off its post is not something you want anywhere near your family, your car, or your neighbor’s fence. On top of that, the actuator runs on mains power, so any repair near the mounting plate means working around live wiring. This is a job for someone who welds for a living, not for a Saturday afternoon. Call (817) 241-4067 and let’s get it handled right.

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