Tig Welder in USA

[Lextreme II]

Anyone in here is good with Tig welder? My guy is having trouble welding my headers because the four pipes are on the way and he can't weld inside portion of the pipe. Anyone?

 

[cjsupra90]

There is nothing that can be done unfortunitly unless the pipes are cut off the flanges and fully welded then re-attached at the flanges. stuff should only be tacted with 2 or 3 very small tacs so that they can be broke apart later on for finish welding. The other thing is that slip-fit collectors are not a good idea on turbos (especially street driven) unless its double walled at the slip joint cause they are impossible to weld all the way around the pipe and therefore leak free. There is really no need for a merge collector on a turbo setup to be honest, maybe on a purpose built race engine.

 

[evil_si]

IMO and no offence intended but they are a poor design in the collector,

and i personally never use thin wall exhaust tube for turbo manifolds, let alone pressed collectors.

i always use schedule 40 tube and bends, a lot heavier but a lot stronger, retain more heat and generally will never crack. and dont need as much bracing to hold the weight off the turbo.

When i fabricate manifolds i cut and scallop each pipe in such a way that all 4 can be directly welded to the turbo flange and merge evenly. welding them can be tricky but with a bit of patience its not generally a problem

ill try and dig out a couple of pics.

 

[Racing-Solutions]

The best bet would be to build a temporary jig locating the head flange in reference to the outlet flange, then 1 by 1 removing each runner and welding them up.

You may have slight leaking issues with that collector in high boost situations.

 

[Lextreme II]

Adam,

Welcome back. Does your company produce headers? Perhaps I can send u the headers and you can make me a stainless steel set.

 

[Racing-Solutions]

We do --- a about a handful of different headers (less then 10) for certain resellers/tuner shops under their brand names. If it's something you are interested in producing, I don't see why we couldn't get you started. If you want a one off, that's possible also but it wont be production bent - it would be pieced.

 

[andris]

This isn't a big deal. Slide your collector off and grind off the welds at the head flange. Remove the 4 runners and weld all the tubes' joints individually and then reassemble before welding to the head flange. I am assuming your collector is completed already.

andris

 

[Toysrme]

Ditto. Buy a slim torch, break it back up & weld it in the correct order LoL!
Sch10 in T304 stainless is perfectly strong enough for a turbo header. It's the most common material choice.

Adam's back. Hello Racing solutions LoL!

Swear you guys advertise on every forum with anything to do about car fabbing I frequent. Good spread LoL!

 

[JBrady]

Here is something that may work to seal the pipes at the collector

"Pyro-Putty® 1000 sealant and metal repair compound is 2-part, powder and liquid system that operates to 1,400°F"

http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/465265/rss

Used in combination with welding it may do the trick. I cannot say if there would be any issue with oxygen sensors though.

 

[turboandrew]

Might be able to "sweat" some brazing material in the slip fit collector as well. But defintly break it off the collector and weld the pipes one at a time first. BTW thinner tube retains heat better. The thicker the tube, the more of a heat sink it is, and the longer it takes to warm up the turbo and keep exhaust hot. For very short headers it may not make much of a difference, though.

 

[Danielm]

Merge collectors are generally not intended to be welded, you should have mentioned to me that they where for a turbo set up and I would have made them a double seal connection.

On our IS300 header we weld each pipe before sliding it in to the collector, so you slide one in weld around, slide the second weld around and so on. It's going to be near impossible to weld all the way around without pulling at least one runner out.

 

[Danielm]

The best bet would be to build a temporary jig locating the head flange in reference to the outlet flange, then 1 by 1 removing each runner and welding them up.

You may have slight leaking issues with that collector in high boost situations.

Not necessarily, SS expands lots more under heat than Mild and with the heat the turbo will be making... those connections will be very tight when hot. Hence why they recommend not welding slip fit connections.

 

[Racing-Solutions]

The difference in the materials between the collector & primaries are my concern. Mild runners with stainless collectors tend to leak due to the differences in thermal expansion.

Not necessarily, SS expands lots more under heat than Mild and with the heat the turbo will be making... those connections will be very tight when hot. Hence why they recommend not welding slip fit connections.

 

[Danielm]

The difference in the materials between the collector & primaries are my concern. Mild runners with stainless collectors tend to leak due to the differences in thermal expansion.

Ohhh I didn't know the runners where mild... in that case yes you are correct.

 

[v8 cortina]

Thin wall pipe works well if lagged for a short while, and make sure your turbos are well supported or cracks will appear very Quickly in your pipes I use heavy wall mild as it dosen,t seem to crack as much after a lot of miles