Winter Turbo Build - Custom Equal Length Tial V-band Goodness!
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Winter Turbo Build - Custom Equal Length Tial V-band Goodness!
It's late and I am headed to bed but I thought I would post a teaser of my latest project...
Designed in SolidWorks, equal length within .020", V-band everything, 100% fabricated by yours truly! Some of the welds are not wonderful but I am geting better!
Designed in SolidWorks, equal length within .020", V-band everything, 100% fabricated by yours truly! Some of the welds are not wonderful but I am geting better!
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Schedule 40 (.140" thick) 304 stainless pipe elbows from McMaster-Carr, sanded smooth with a 4-1/2" grinder (and those "soft" sanding disks) then polished on a buffing wheel. The flange is from Straight Line Specialties. I will post some more pictures of the fabrication and finished product tonight!
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I bought my 94 in 2004 with less than 8,000 miles on it. Dyno'ed it on a Dynapack, made 98 whp!
My first turbo setup was a custom T3/T4 40 trim, which pretty much sucked. It was based on an ETD racing long tube manifold, ebay intercooler, all custom plumbing and a LINK ecu with RC 550s and a Walbro 190 HP. Made 227 hp (forget the torque - 190?) at 14 psi.
Then I went to a GT28RS drop in replacement from ATP, which made much better power. Fabbed a 3" exhaust, made 268whp/250wtq at 15 psi. Ran this way for more than a few years until this past summer, when I started to hear an exhaust leak and found two cracks in the outermost runners of my manifold, and a crack in the downpipe. At this point the car has about 25k miles on it, so I got about 15k out of the ETD manifold (probably about 15-20 autocrosses, lots of daily boosting, a couple trips to the dragstrip).
I vee'd out the cracks and welded the manifold and downpipe back up, but then I started checking out the forums again, which I haven't done in a few years, and I started seeing some of the awesome stuff coming from ARTech and Absurdflow (and Tial), which got me inspired.
I always disliked my ETD manifold because the turbo sits up high, which makes anything more than a 2.5" downpipe almost impossible. So i decided to revamp the whole system and take a crack at building my own manifold, and while I am at it a 3" downpipe to mate up with the 3" exhaust. Since I am an engineer and CAD is what I do, naturally I had to design the manifold in SolidWorks. After 5 iterations I had a design that I liked and thought I could fabricate. Since I designed it in SW, I was able to make sure all of the runners were the same exact length and also designed a fixture at the same time.
It is still a work in progress, but here are a bunch of pictures of the progress so far. I started fabricating in September, and now that winter is here the car is going nowhere fast.
My first turbo setup was a custom T3/T4 40 trim, which pretty much sucked. It was based on an ETD racing long tube manifold, ebay intercooler, all custom plumbing and a LINK ecu with RC 550s and a Walbro 190 HP. Made 227 hp (forget the torque - 190?) at 14 psi.
Then I went to a GT28RS drop in replacement from ATP, which made much better power. Fabbed a 3" exhaust, made 268whp/250wtq at 15 psi. Ran this way for more than a few years until this past summer, when I started to hear an exhaust leak and found two cracks in the outermost runners of my manifold, and a crack in the downpipe. At this point the car has about 25k miles on it, so I got about 15k out of the ETD manifold (probably about 15-20 autocrosses, lots of daily boosting, a couple trips to the dragstrip).
I vee'd out the cracks and welded the manifold and downpipe back up, but then I started checking out the forums again, which I haven't done in a few years, and I started seeing some of the awesome stuff coming from ARTech and Absurdflow (and Tial), which got me inspired.
I always disliked my ETD manifold because the turbo sits up high, which makes anything more than a 2.5" downpipe almost impossible. So i decided to revamp the whole system and take a crack at building my own manifold, and while I am at it a 3" downpipe to mate up with the 3" exhaust. Since I am an engineer and CAD is what I do, naturally I had to design the manifold in SolidWorks. After 5 iterations I had a design that I liked and thought I could fabricate. Since I designed it in SW, I was able to make sure all of the runners were the same exact length and also designed a fixture at the same time.
It is still a work in progress, but here are a bunch of pictures of the progress so far. I started fabricating in September, and now that winter is here the car is going nowhere fast.
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I can't explain how awesome this is in words. Im planning on doing a similar manifold to this for my next build, I have to learn solidworks so I can design the equal length runners.
How much was the flange in stainless from sls? I didn't see a price for stainless. Is it 3/8 or 1/2 inch thick?
How much was the flange in stainless from sls? I didn't see a price for stainless. Is it 3/8 or 1/2 inch thick?
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I can't explain how awesome this is in words. Im planning on doing a similar manifold to this for my next build, I have to learn solidworks so I can design the equal length runners.
How much was the flange in stainless from sls? I didn't see a price for stainless. Is it 3/8 or 1/2 inch thick?
How much was the flange in stainless from sls? I didn't see a price for stainless. Is it 3/8 or 1/2 inch thick?
Let me know if you need some help with SolidWorks, I can give you some tips on how to model it. I can also send you the file for the flanges if you want.
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1) You have to be able to rotate the pipe a precise amount (depending on the collector angle - I think mine was 86 degrees rotation or something...I used SW to figure it all out!). I used a rotating bubble level for this, and cut a notch in the end of the pipe so I had a flat surface to strap the bubble level thingy to.
2) You have to control how far into the saw the pipe goes - ie if you move the pipe 1/8" further into the saw when you unclamp, rotate and re-clamp it, it wont turn out right.
3) Blade deflection is a biatch. I bought the best blade I could find (made for stainless, more expensive than average - I can get the details if you want) from McMaster Carr to speed up the cutting. Then I held a chunk of 2x4 against the side of the blade as I was cutting (especially when starting the cut) to reduce blade wobble and deflection. Do it outside because the wood will smoke like crazy! Also I use a 12" blade even though the saw is 14" because it reduces deflection. After the cut was complete I just kept sweeping the saw up and down against the piece (while applying pressure with said 2x4 when necessary) to clean up the cut and make sure it was parallel to the the blade as it sits naturally. I spent hours doing that...
By the way this is the very first collector/manifold I have ever made, and i only scrapped one extra collector piece because the cut was wrong!
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I use inventor, not solidworks but I have always struggled with
Making manifolds and things. Not the type of design work I usually do at my job. How do you make the manifold in cad? Treat each bend as a part ? What kind of tools do you use in sw to measure runner length?
Making manifolds and things. Not the type of design work I usually do at my job. How do you make the manifold in cad? Treat each bend as a part ? What kind of tools do you use in sw to measure runner length?
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