Another busy day

I grabbed some pics from Dave showing how much bigger the new motor is and just a much nicer pic of the drill press as it currently sits:

Today started out with a journey all over New Jersey. That is not usually my favorite thing to do, especially since I ended up in Trenton, but, all in all, things went well. I first drove down to the McMaster-Carr warehouse in Robinsville. I love that place. I picked up a few things:

3/4" aluminum rod to repair Mike's brake drum, SS springs for header retaining and much better sized SS washers for Dave's bike. I forgot the other washers, so I didn't get to return them. After I stopped in to check on the status of the above stuff, I was told that since the orders were placed late at night it would be a while before the orders came up to to the pickup area. That was fine with me since I needed to exchange my argon bottle (FINALLY!). The nearest place I could exchange it was about half an hour away in Trenton, so, I went there and found a really pleasant manager of the store who was very helpful. We discussed the possibility of purchasing a small acetylene bottle and whether or not I could exchange the old oxygen cylinder I was given a while back. Overall a very pleasant experience, and if I can time my pickups correctly, I will be going back there. 

Once I got back to my "shop" I set about prepping the mandrel bends for welding. This mostly involved lots of wire brushing. So much so that I got tired of holding the drill and having the tubes slip around so . . . I got creative:

That saved a heck of a lot of time and was way safer than holding the pieces in one hand and the drill in the other. Two hands controlling a piece you are working on is nearly always safer! Safety doesn't always have to mean slow. I saved at least 45 minutes putting together that quick setup! 

That took care of the outside of the tubing, but you can't forget the inside! Here is the tubing ready for some flap wheeling with the hanging moto-tool equipped with a mini-flap wheel:

That thing is awesome! A dremel ain't got nothin' on that! It made quick work of cleaning up the insides of the tubing. Since pretty much everything was prepped, it was time to start welding stuff together!

Here is the jig I used to attempt to keep things more consistent:

Darnit. I forgot to rotate a few pictures before exporting them. Oh well. I'll apologize for the taco neck, but, that's about it. 

Top view:

Close up:

The angle kept the legs on the same plane, or at least the same length. The block in the middle of the legs clamped to the angle is a 1/2" spacer to keep the Legs from pulling in too far (something that happened on a previous collector that makes things annoying off from square) and the clamped angle on top keeps the pieces flat and pretty well locked together. I like this jig, for now, but am going to make something more permanent in the future. 

My welds are finally starting to show tendencies of what I like to see. In this series of photos, you can see a progressively nicer bead developing, and I hope this trend continues!

What one must NOT forget is no matter how nice the weld is on the outside, the inside is what counts for exhaust flow! Here is the inside of one of my merges just after welding:

Typical stuff for welding mild steel. Note how well the "crotch" of the joint matches up and how smooth the flow path is. 

Same merge, just cleaned up a bit:

Much better! It only took a few minutes to do the work with this:

You can see how much use I have gotten out of that stone by comparing it to a new one: 

I got the megaphone and exhaust extension all welded together and was working on matching the collector outlet to the megaphone in this pic: 

While things were cooling off, I took the flange I am using and slapped it on the belt sander. Sanded on the left, as delivered on the right:

Since I will be indexing the rest of the header of cylinder number 4, I got that runner prepped and tacked in place:

I didn't get pics of all the welds I did on the collector because I was too busy getting work done! I have pics of the previous ones I've done that you can look for. It is mostly the same process, which is slightly boring. You weld a bit, then wait for things to cool down. Weld some more then wait . . . I did try to get as much done as possible instead of just sitting around and waiting.

Here's a good example of what I did while waiting for things to cool down:

That is Mike's drum. Here is a closeup of the damage I am going to repair:

A brake cable housing is supposed to slip into that broken hole. I am going to cut and grind the old material down and and replace it with this:

After I weld that piece in it's place, I'll finish it up nicely and ensure that it fits the brake cable.

Overall, I traveled a LOT and did a crapton of work. Towards the end of the evening, I started to get tired and made a few annoying errors like getting the tungsten completely stock in the weld: 

 I am going to grind that out and finish the collector tomorrow morning. I'll get the primaries mocked up by the early afternoon, and hopefully get to welding most of them up. I have to go home for my sister's birthday dinner in the evening, which puts a huge cramp on my working time tomorrow, but I will keep pushing forward to get this and the rest of the projects on my plate done.

 Tomorrow, most of my Amazon order should arrive, too, including the router speed control and new belts and discs. I have to say that the belt and disc that came with the sander actually are decent, but I am wearing them out through shear usage! I hope to have much more to report tomorrow! =)