FAAC Welding & Fabrication Nationwide

FAAC Welding & Fabrication: The Richardson Owner’s Guide

If the welded steel on your FAAC gate has cracked, fatigued, or pulled loose from its mount, we can repair or refabricate it, usually in one visit. Most FAAC welding and fabrication repairs in Richardson run between $250 and $900 installed, depending on the extent of the damage and whether we’re repairing an existing bracket, reinforcing a hinge post, or building a new mounting plate from scratch. A live person answers our phone at (903) 627-2906, 24 hours a day, so you’ll know the exact price before we ever roll a truck to your driveway.

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Here’s how most Richardson owners discover the failure: the gate starts sagging on the hinge side, or the operator is working but the gate shudders halfway through its travel. You look close and see a hairline crack running through the weld bead or a mounting tab bent just enough to throw the whole leaf out of square. FAAC operators are powerful, quiet machines, but they push against the gate’s steel every single cycle. When the steel was welded thin or the original fabricator didn’t allow for Texas soil movement, the weld is what eventually gives.

Key Takeaways:

• We stock steel plate, tube, and reinforcement stock on the truck for most FAAC gate repairs in Richardson.
• Every weld is quoted and agreed to before the first spark is struck. No surprises on the bill.
• We’re independent, not affiliated with FAAC, but we service their full residential lineup: 400, 412, 415, and the older swing-arm units still common in established Richardson neighborhoods.
• Every repair is covered by our written 90-Day Done Right Promise.

Which FAAC Models This Applies To

We weld and fabricate for the full residential FAAC lineup you’re likely to find on a Richardson driveway: the 400 series swing-arm operators, the 412 and 415 compact units, and the older FAAC models that first appeared in north Dallas in the 1990s. The welding and fabrication side of the work usually involves three areas: the gate leaf itself, the hinge and mounting posts, and the operator bracket that ties the piston arm to the gate. Each one fails differently, and each requires different steel.

The compatibility gotcha most Richardson owners never see coming is this: FAAC’s operator brackets are engineered to very tight tolerances, and the aftermarket universal brackets sold at big-box stores are almost always thinner steel than what FAAC ships from the factory. We carry OEM-spec FAAC brackets and can also fabricate a matching bracket from 1/4-inch plate when the original is discontinued or weeks out on order. If you want to identify what you have before calling, look at the operator’s data tag near the base of the arm. It will list the model and series. Then measure the bracket’s mounting hole spacing. If it’s an older FAAC with a 5-inch hole pattern, do not try to adapt a universal 4-inch bracket out of a catalog. The geometry will fight the operator and crack the weld within a season.

One more honest note about aftermarket parts: for FAAC specifically, we use OEM or equivalent-spec steel brackets whenever possible. FAAC’s engineers calculate the exact force the operator exerts on the bracket, and the steel thickness is not arbitrary. A cheaper piece of plate steel welded on as a “good enough” fix is how a gate that worked for 20 years suddenly needs a third repair in 18 months. That’s the kind of correction we end up making for homeowners who tried the bargain route first.

Signs Your FAAC Welding & Fabrication Is Failing

• Visible crack lines through the weld bead or the surrounding steel. This is the one to take seriously. Hairline cracks spread quickly in Richardson’s summer heat and clay-heavy soil, which shifts more than owners realize. What looks like a cosmetic line today is a broken gate leaf in July.
• The gate sags on the hinge side, scraping the ground or the latch post. Hinge welds were not built to carry the full weight of an oversized or waterlogged gate leaf. When she sees this, Victor Salinas checks the hinge post for internal rust and measures how far the gate has dropped before we decide between welding reinforcement or rebuilding the post seat.
• The operator arm clunks or slaps at the end of its travel. The gate’s steel has flexed enough that the operator mount no longer aligns square. The piston compensates until it can’t, and then the bracket takes the strain in a direction FAAC never intended.
• Powder coating or paint is lifting in a straight line near a bracket. Steel bends before it breaks. When the coating cracks in a straight line, the bracket underneath is working back and forth. That’s the failure warning most owners miss.
• Mounting studs or through-bolts are hogging out their holes. The gate has moved past the point where the bolts can hold it. Welding the holes closed and re-drilling is a standard repair, but only if we catch it before the stud rips completely free.

Replacement Cost & What’s Included

For Richardson homeowners, a typical FAAC welding or fabrication repair runs between $250 and $900, installed and guaranteed in writing. A small crack repair in a hinge bracket with weld prep and re-coating usually lands between $250 and $400. Refabricating an operator mounting bracket from plate steel and welding it square to the gate typically runs $350 to $600. Full reinforcement of a sagging gate leaf, including new hinge tabs, gusset plates, and a rehang, lands in the $600 to $900 range depending on gate weight and access.

Every quote is settled before we start. You’ll know the price for parts, labor, and any reinforcement steel. If we find additional damage once we grind back the old weld, we show it to you and agree on the revised number before proceeding. No work happens behind a surprise on the invoice.

And we stand behind it. Every weld, bracket, and fabricated part gets our 90-Day Done Right Promise in writing. If the repair isn’t right, we come back and make it right. No arguing, no paperwork, no exceptions. Seniors and veterans always receive a 5% discount, and any repair over $250 qualifies for $50 off.

DIY or Call Us?

There are things a careful owner can safely check: whether the gate leaf has visibly dropped, whether the operator bracket shows hairline cracks in the coating, whether the mounting studs wobble when you apply pressure with a gloved hand. That list is quick and safe.

What you should not do is fire up a welder on a gate that’s under tension from a connected FAAC operator. The operator’s capacitor stores enough charge to hurt you even with power disconnected at the breaker, and a gate leaf that shifts mid-weld can pin an arm or a hand against a post. We’ve had to repair both the original failure and someone else’s attempted fix more often than we’d like. Welding on a live gate, or one that’s merely disconnected, is not a Saturday project. It’s how serious injuries happen in driveways across Richardson every year.

Call us at (903) 627-2906. We’ll send a background-checked, uniformed technician who welds for a living and knows FAAC’s tolerances. Price first, work second, warranty after.

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