^Oddly enough, I can't remember ever cooking anything legit for you when you've visited. Usually we just end up going out, or in the case of your birthday, my girlfriend made dinner. Weird. I suppose there's always Carlisle.
Anyway, I did some work yesterday but didn't post an update so here we go. I turned that bung down in the lathe. Came out pretty good.
Resulted in a nice hammer-fit to the hole I drilled.
I welded this one from the outside instead of the inside of the pipe like the flange. For some reason, my welder is making a LOT of spatter on this project. I recently(ish) replaced the wire and I'm thinking that's it (or the cold ambient temps). Its flux core, so there's always been SOME spatter, but this is next level. I've been eyeballing upgrading to either a gas MIG and addition TIG, or all-in-one unit like the Vulcan Omni 220.
After that I moved on to the other end of the connector pipe.
Sidebar - in my experience, there's never been any exhaust system that works out perfectly and fits everything just right. There
needs to be at least 1 section that is custom to make the s*** up front line up with s*** up front, and the s*** in back to line up with the s*** in back. That's why I'm tackling this center section myself. Its a good bit of work, but its worth it. This could also be done by a muffler shop with the ability to make custom bends and such.
Anyway, the other end is where I reduce down to 2.5" for the cat back. The off the shelf flex pipe I bought doesn't leave enough room for other off the shelf reducers + flange. Unfortunately I ended up having to cut the front and back of the reducer, as well as the back end of the flex pipe just to get everything to fit and still have socket/bolt clearance and such.
With the small pieces, I'm having to cut them by hand because my sawsall and/or angle grinder can't really get in close enough to the vise to where I need to cut. Its slow going.
So I got the mail order flanges in, which apparently are stamped and warped as s*** (even visually). I put them on a flat surface and they rocked like whoa, so I put them on my belt sander and gave them a quick dusting to see where the high spots were.
Normally I'd use the one with the high spot on the inside for better/more immediate gasket sealing, buuuuttt....
This one had a big gash/mark in it that would definitely result in a leak, so I flipped it and just sanded the ever living s*** out of it to maximize the contact area. Crossing my fingers the gasket makes up the rest and it seals.