FAAC Welding & Fabrication Nationwide

FAAC Welding & Fabrication: The Dallas Owner’s Guide

FAAC welding and fabrication work in Dallas typically runs $325 – $1,400 depending on whether we’re repairing a cracked gate leaf, rebuilding a hinge mount, or fabricating a custom bracket for an odd-lot installation. We stock common FAAC-compatible weldments and fabrication blanks on our trucks, so most jobs are done in a single visit. What usually brings a Dallas homeowner to this page is a gate that’s sagging at the hinge, a mounting post that’s pulled loose from the brick, or a crack that’s been growing through the steel for months until the gate finally binds against the operator.

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FAAC operators are built to move a gate smoothly, not to fight a gate that’s slowly tearing itself apart at the welds. When the fabrication starts to go, the motor gets blamed first, but the part that actually failed is usually the steel underneath it. Lonnie Burke has seen this enough times along the Kessler Park corridor and throughout Dallas that he can usually spot the real failure point before the gate even stops moving.

Which FAAC Models This Applies To

FAAC swing and slide operators share common mounting geometry across the 390, 400, 412, 415, 750, 760, 770, and 844 series lines. The fabrication points are the same regardless of model: hinge plates, operator mounting plates, gate leaf reinforcement, rack mounts on slide gates, and post brackets. What changes is the plate thickness and bolt pattern. The 400-series swing operators use a narrower mounting footprint than the 750-series, and if you weld a plate drilled for the wrong series, the operator sits crooked and tears up its own limit switches within months.

Identifying the right part usually takes 30 seconds if the original assembly tag is still readable, and about 10 minutes of measuring if it’s not. We match plate thickness, bolt-hole spacing, and post diameter rather than guessing from a model number alone. On the OEM-versus-aftermarket question: FAAC’s factory brackets and weldments are fine, but they’re not magic. A properly fabricated replacement from 1/4-inch steel plate, drilled and welded to match the original geometry, will outlast the factory part in Dallas weather because it’s not fighting rust from day one. We use hot-dipped galvanized or powder-coated steel on any part we fabricate, and we tell you which one we used and why.

Signs Your FAAC Welding & Fabrication Is Failing

• The gate sags visibly at the free end. This is almost always a hinge weld or hinge plate that’s fatigued. The steel hasn’t snapped yet, but it’s flexing every time the gate cycles, and the gap at the latch side is the tell. The FAAC operator hasn’t failed; it’s hauling a gate that’s slowly pulling itself out of square.
• The operator mounting bolts keep loosening. If you’ve tightened the same four bolts twice in a year, the plate they thread into is wallowed out. Re-tightening just chews the holes wider. The fix is a new plate, properly welded, not a bigger bolt.
• You can see daylight through a crack in the gate frame. Cracks in gate steel don’t heal and they don’t stay the same size. In Dallas, the freeze-thaw cycle in winter and the summer heat expansion work the crack open a little more every month. A 2-inch crack this spring is a 6-inch crack by fall, and by then the gate’s flexing enough to kill the motor’s gearbox.
• The gate scrapes concrete or catches on the latch side only when it’s hot outside. That’s thermal expansion, and it’s normal steel behavior, but it means the gate was fabricated with almost zero clearance. The fix is either trimming and re-welding the leaf or adjusting the hinge geometry. Grinding the concrete buys a month; it doesn’t fix the fabrication.
• The slide gate jumps the track or rides up on the rollers. Look at the rack mount. If the welds holding the rack to the gate have started to crack, the rack flexes away from the pinion under load, and the whole gate lurches. The FAAC slide operator’s clutch will eat itself trying to compensate. Fix the rack weld first, then reset the operator.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

For Dallas homeowners, here’s the honest range:

• Single hinge plate replacement: $325 – $475. Post and gate leaf stay in place; we cut out the old plate, weld in the new one, and paint or coat the repair.
• Operator mounting plate replacement (swing): $375 – $550. Includes re-drilling to match your specific FAAC series and re-mounting the operator.
• Gate leaf crack repair and reinforcement: $250 – $600 depending on crack length and whether we’re adding a fish plate for structural reinforcement.
• Custom bracket or offset mounting solution: $400 – $800. For gates built on slopes, odd brick pillars, or retrofits where the standard plate won’t sit right.
• Full gate frame fabrication repair (multiple cracks, re-square the leaf): $850 – $1,400. This is a rebuild, not a patch, and it comes with the same one-year written guarantee.

Every price is written down and agreed to before we touch the gate. The number doesn’t move once the welder’s lit. That’s The Garrison Standard, and it applies to every job we do in Dallas. The work itself is covered by the 365-Day Done Right Promise, a written guarantee good for a full year from the date of service. If the weld fails, we come back and fix it. No charge, no argument.

DIY or Call Us?

There’s a version of this repair you can safely do yourself, and a version you shouldn’t attempt. Here’s the split. You can safely inspect the welds: look for rust lines running through a joint, hairline cracks radiating from bolt holes, and bolts that turn more than a quarter turn before they snug. You can also safely note when the gate binds, what the temperature is, and which hinge the movement comes from. That gets you a useful picture of the problem.

What you shouldn’t do is fire up a 110-volt MIG welder from a big-box store and weld on a gate that’s still hanging. Welding a gate leaf on its hinges puts the bearings, the operator, and you in the path of a few hundred pounds of steel that’s only secured by whatever’s left of the failed part. We cut the gate down, weld it on stands, and re-hang it square. If the crack is in the operator mounting plate, the operator comes off first, because welding near the FAAC control board is how you turn a $400 fabrication job into a $1,200 electronics replacement. If you’ve got a failed weld and you’re not sure which side of that line you’re on, call us at (940) 531-9746 and we’ll talk it through before anyone picks up a tool.

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