Pete's Twin Scroll Manifold Progress

Today was a busy day. It might not look like I got a whole lot done, but, when you are working with a tough material (Stainless Steel is a heck of a lot tougher to work with, and tough to work with correctly) in a new format (I've never worked with schedule 40 bends and pipe before), you have to go slow and take your time to get things to fit well in a manner that will flow well, especially when it comes to turbo setups.

Enough whining! On to pics!

The last time we saw stuff for Pete's manifold, I had made a few important cuts. Here's a refresher pic:

I couldn't take a lot of in process pics, but this is what I ended up with after way too long a time getting these two pieces to fit together in a decent low angle merge:

As you can see from the light leak, it isn't a perfect fit:

But looking at it from the important side (the inside):

 After a bit of cleanup, both legs are going to flow very, very nicely!

Once I got the pieces fitted up decently, it was time to clean everything up in preparation for welding. I use my hanging grinder (click HERE for more info on which grinder I use) and a roll cartridge that was fresh and never used on anything else. Here are the results:

A closeup of the texture left:

Then it is time for some really deep cleaning:

Use gloves!

Acetone is really nasty for your body. It absorbs into your skin and is not a good thing to force your body to deal with. Also, the oils from your skin can contaminate the weld and lead to rusting. No, that is NOT an exaggeration. Some people's skin oils and salts can leave rusty fingerprints on stainless.  It isn't a fun thing to see on your otherwise shiny stainless parts. LOL!

To wipe everything down you can use clean rags or paper towels, but I don't have rags, so I just use:

Remo (a guy I know) is going to kill me for not having a diffuser on my purge hose . . . but I haven't made one yet. LOL!

This turned out to be a bad idea. LOL! The hose started melting once I got to welding.

You can't block off all the piece. You need a place for the air (and specifically Oxygen) to escape as the argon fills the pipe. So, make sure you leave some place for it to come out at the very top of your workpiece!

I really need to make a "third hand." Check out this video by Jody at weldingtipsandtrick.com did to show his improved "third hand:"

The back side is taped:

I tacked it on one side, then taped that side up:

I had to smack it with a hammer to get the pieces to line back up. If you have never welded on stainless . . . you have NO idea how much that metal can move. It is CRAZY!

Since I had my hands occupied, here is the finished piece:

Most of the discoloration outside of the actual weld is the residue from the tape. The manifold is going to be sandblasted in preparation for ceramic coating, otherwise I would be a bit more attentive at cleaning that stuff up. Pete evidently likes to shift dirty things, so this is my little bit of payback. (JUST KIDDING, PETE! LOL!)

Weld closeup:

Since the fitup isn't perfect, the beads aren't really all that wonderful looking. This is the first time I'm welding this stuff and I'm no dummy so I starting with the pieces that are hidden in the back out of site. LOL!

I had a heck of a time figuring out how to mock up the rest of the stuff since I have two hands and the clamps that I have, while useful, aren't exactly wide enough to completely support the weight of the pieces of this manifold. So . . . I got creative:

I found some tube that slip fit into the straight pipe very snugly. I discovered that the ID of the els isn't exactly the same as the ID of the pipe, so I had to get even more creative and cut out a slice from the tube an ended up with this:

Which allowed me to do this:

And that is how I ended the night. =) 

The first cut is the hardest. (Not necessarily the deepest . . . )

As an aside from the really gross crap I'm dealing with the rest of my day, I took a break and made the first cut in what will be many for Pete's custom twin scroll turbo manifold.

The manifold is being made from 1.5" Stainless Steel Schedule 40 pipe and bends (also knows as weld els, short for elbows). In the above pic, you can see that I cut a 45* cast elbow in half (it is very nearly actually a perfect cut). I forgot to grab a pic of why I did this, but basically, I wanted to minimize the transition angle between two runners of the exhaust, in this case, #2 and #3, and make accessing the bolts for the flange and engine mount easier. This leads me into thinking I really need to write up an article on handling and welding Stainless, as it is far, far different than dealing with normal steels, even to the point of requiring special markers so as to prevent corrosion.

I spent a bit of time cleaning up the saw cut, which you can see the "as cut" finish here:

 And here is the finished part:

Why go through the extra step when the saw cut is fine? Because Stainless. The basics of Stainless are:

PREPARATION! A good plan solves many issues before they start.
CLEANLINESS! It is NEVER too clean.
FITMENT! Perfect is not an option.
BACKPURGING! If you want it to last.

I'll definitely have to work on an article . . . And I just added that to my to-do list for next week.