Craftsman Welder, need help!

[dsp]

I'm new to the forum and this is my first post but I hope you guys can help me out. I ran into a problem with my craftsman 90 amp mig welder when I went to weld with it this morning. To make a long story short, when you touch the grounded metal with the flux-cored wire coming out of the tip of the gun it begins to weld without the trigger being touched at all. I had this problem with a mig gun before and it was either the gun or ground, couldn't remember which so I dismantled and checked both. I took the ground clamp off, cleaned it up, cut the cable and put on a fresh connecter and also cleaned up everywhere on the welder where there was a ground connection. When I dismantled the gun (tweco) I found that where the ground cable attatched to the brass gas valve was pretty rusty. I dismantled, wire brushed and cleaned all the connections in the gun, put everything back together and same problem (just to be sure the freshly cleaned and connected ground clamp was securely grounded to a large unpained, unrusted steel bench vise- same problem). Seeing as how a new gun is roughly about what the welder is worth I would rather not guess and hope that is the problem, only to have it turn out to be something else. Any and all advice is greatly appreciated. Hopefully some of you out there have had this problem too and know exactly what it is.
Thank you very much,
Dan :confused:

[Tailshaft56]

Does this welder have a contactor? Many of the smaller migs don't so the wire is hot whenever the power is on. It's not a problem, just be sure to leave a gap before pulling the trigger.

[Mighty Mouse]

SOme of the older units are "hot" all the time. You sure this is not the case?

[Mouse]

I know this post is about a month old now, but I missed it the first time around... just thought I would post for future reference...

Tailshaft & Mighty Mouse are correct. There is nothing wrong with your welder.

My old Craftsman 90A welder was hot all the time. I would get flashed constantly :angry: That little feature was actually one of my chief reasons for upgrading welders. I always fealt that design was dangerous... An auto darkening helmet is a must with one of those welders...