not a CA topic, but it kept me from workin on my car this weekend.

[Not_a_sr]

plus i have noone else to show them to, and the owner loved them. they are for a 96ish supercoupe T-bird that had been turbod a year ago, his old headers were comming apart all over and the ceramic coating came off in 15mins of running. he came in thursday evening, and asked that they be done by saturday night. being that hes a good guy and great customer i agreed to put my 240 off for the weekend. i made them with 1 5/8ths piping, collectors to go to a 2.5" crossover. i still have to go over to his place and weld the crossover pipe togther since hes building that part. last year he went 11.40 at over 125 with stock IRS in the back, and his collectors on the manifolds had litterly exploded and were only held togther by heat wrap. we got word the dyno # was around 629 with over 700ft lbs of torque, i never saw the sheets, but this thurs we are dynoing it so we shall see. he rented out the dyno from 9to5 and flew in a specialist, im hoping it gets some heads turning.



the header behind it is one that has been repaired after world ford challenge in OK it exploded on the track and left him limping home.



there are a few places that i wished i would have done better, or had more time to work on, but all in all im pretty happy with the results.

[Bwana]

Those look pretty clean and solid to me, good work! That's one beast of a thunderchicken...

[OmarM]

very nice i wish i could weld, i would fabricate so much ****, would never leave home.

[boost_boy]

I still think you did a nice job, Jon. You have a good head for this kind of stuff and your welds will only get better with time and practice. But if i were the consumer, I wouldn't complain at all as long as it's functional.

Dee

[tyrannix]

i did my first real welding over the weekend, wish i got some pics of it.it was the turbo inlet, needed to rotate it (would have hit the manifold if not) so i cut off the flange rotated and welded

the bead looked so gross (im still getting down the speed and bead control deal) but auto-tinting welding masks are awesome

but it felt solid, and water couldnt get in, so im guessing its a good weld (?) weel see if it doesnt fall apart/destroy the turbo

was with a non-gas wirefeed mig

(forgot why i replied)

looks awesome, id be lovin it if i could produce those kinds of results

CJ
Modified by tyrannix at 1:53 PM 5/4/2006

[NismoBgt]

My only recomendation for you would be to purge the inside of the tubing with gas or flux. Even more so if you are welding 321 or inconel. Notice the heat discoloration on the tubing this is a sign that the tube is outgassing INSIDE and getting impuritys in the weld. When you weld thicker materials its not apperent becouse you dont have burn thru. But THIN gauge material the backside of the weld is exposed. You will also be able to tell by a lava type or porus looking weld INSIDE the tube. Heat will stress those types of welds and cause them to break over time. Probaby the reason the other manifolds failed. TO ALL OF YOU OUT THERE THE BEST ADVICE I CAN GIVE YOU IS CLEAN YOUR MATERIAL PRIOR TO WELDING. Even with a bubble gum machine. Its the number one cause of poor quality welds and failures.

[NismoBgt]

Oh Yea.. NICE JOB by the way.. Nice fit work and layout!

[Not_a_sr]

My only recomendation for you would be to purge the inside of the tubing with gas or flux. Even more so if you are welding 321 or inconel. Notice the heat discoloration on the tubing this is a sign that the tube is outgassing INSIDE and getting impuritys in the weld. When you weld thicker materials its not apperent becouse you dont have burn thru. But THIN gauge material the backside of the weld is exposed. You will also be able to tell by a lava type or porus looking weld INSIDE the tube. Heat will stress those types of welds and cause them to break over time. Probaby the reason the other manifolds failed. TO ALL OF YOU OUT THERE THE BEST ADVICE I CAN GIVE YOU IS CLEAN YOUR MATERIAL PRIOR TO WELDING. Even with a bubble gum machine. Its the number one cause of poor quality welds and failures.

yeah im thinking after some problems welding these that i should be backpurging, most people say its not needed on mild, but i was noticing that even with cleaning the pipes really good inside and out that i was running into problems with contaminates, and felt like i was loosing gas coverage, i thought it might just be the pipes, because only a few spots would do it and it would kinda pop and blow out into a hole.

i have a backpurge setup on my rig, so its not a problem to set it up for welding thin gauge stuff, i have it setup for when i weld SS 8gauge manifolds up.

i too can not stress enough cleaning the materials. its even more important with aluminum welding.

[float_6969]

Looks great Jon! When my SSAC mani craps out on me, maybe I'll have you weld me up a replacement.

[NismoBgt]

I think the reason there stuff is poor quality is one its produced in low quality overseas factorys using substandard material. However the weld work is nothing short of amazing. They use low quality filler on POS tig machines and come out with that stuff. You can tell the use a flux to backpurge and who know the the quality of the jigs. My guess is there jigs are for crap. I also noticed when hacking up my SSAC manifold to fabricate mine that the bends were very distorted and streched and mashed and just very low quality. Im sure they are using some sort of press bending equipment and not mandrel. With a little tuning of there process and some better QC they could actualy have a damned nice product. But you got what you get for 149 or 99 or what ever cheapO price ya pay.

[float_6969]

This is how I look at the SSAC mani. I KNOW that at some point it's gonna crap out on me. I knew that when I bought it. But I'll run it until it does, and then I'll use it to have another one fabricated. I've gotten my use out of it, and I don't expect it to go on me anytime in the near future.

[float_6969]

Hey Jon, I just sent you an email...