Stop in for a cup of coffee
I have a cheap harbor freight wire feed welder here too. My problem is always what feeds the wire. It has the grease filled gear box above the electrical motor. Grease seeps down into the motor, it just smokes. I took it apart to clean the grease from the motor a couple of times. It ran again until it didn't again. So last time I went into it I cleaned all the remaining original grease out of it and put a very small amount of white lithium grease in. I haven't used again for several years so I don't know what it might do today.