front barrel stud

so after the strip down and finding that the circlip had escaped from the piston and left a gouge in the barrels, I'm now onto another issue,
it would appear that the front stud that holds the barrel on is missing, and not just pulled like you would expect but the cases have sheared and the part has disappeared leaving my oil shimmering!

would it be ok to leave this out on rebuilding or would i be better getting it welded?

pics tomorrow

A simlar thing happened to me over 35 years ago I was tightening the barrel nuts and when I done the front centre one it striped and the stud pulled out, I was a bit of a ruff bush mechanic at the time so I just glued the stud in with the nut on with a 2pac glue, it didn't leak oil after doing this but after this happened my motor had a rattle noise when at idle but at revs no rattle, it was like this for about 1 1/2 years when I decided to rebuild the motor for the Featherbed frame.
When I pulled the barrels off what I found was where the stud screw in to the crank case the piece had sheared off the broken bit was sitting on top of the crank but was to big to get down to the bottom of the crank it just rolled on top of the crank at idle which caused the rattle noise and when reving it just flowed inbetween the barrels, I was so amazed at this as the broken piece was like a polihed stone after a 1 1/2 years it was there, when rebuilding It I just reglued the stud back in the hole with out the broken piece off course, the glue trick did the job for about 20 years before I had to replace the crank cases because of hair line fractures in the main seal area.
I still have that broken piece somewhere in my shed as well the old crank cases, it has been a good yarn for many years, so when you check your barrel nuts don't over tighten the centre nut or the same thing could happen to you.

Ashley