Manifold/Downpipe/exhaust fab project- What/where to buy?
 

As the title states, soon I'll be diving off into building my own manifold/downpipe/exhaust.

I've purchased the exhaust flange and turbo inlet flange from turbo-flanges.com (it's been 14 days, nothing yet, starting to become concerned)

Schedule 10 stainless els and tees from rawbrokerage.com to finish the manifold up.

Narrowed turbo down to something T2. I've been looking for the magic $100 SR20DET turbo that is supposed to be everywhere, but can find nones. May consider churbo. Anybody got a specific model they would recommend for a stock block build? Screw it and get smallest EFR? Wife would notice $1500 turbo purchase. But, damn.

Now then- My question I am really interested in- Where do you buy your exhaust tubing and what exactly did you buy? Was it a kit, or was it pieced together? 16 or 18 gauge? 304? 316? hanger rod, what diameter?

I have HIV and I'm trying really hard not to let it become full blown AIDS. I believe some good advice/instruction here would help.

ALSO- I bought the AHP alphaTIG 200 unit. Anybody else using it? What are some baseline settings for things like manifolds, and tubing?

First trip out with a TIG. I've done MIG for years. I'll be spending time practicing on scrap I drag home from our office. We do subsea stuff so everything in stainless.

:laugh: didn't get it at 1st

I got my flanges from BMC race, because they make the oval to round transition as part of the flange and give a nice little counter sink for the pipe. And their other flanges are pretty normally priced so I just bought the turbo flange from them too. Steam pipe from ace stainless, they have the best price. Tubing from where ever you want. Getting it in a kit of random bends seems to be the cheap way to do it. I think I have 16ga because it was cheapest. Would have liked to go 18 or 20 gauge to cut weight because racecar, but 16 is what I would run on a street car. I think my hanger is 321 or something, I just got the cheapest metal drop of 3/8 3xx stainless I could find that gave me enough rod. Fuck it, 308 filler was fine, I'm sure the weld is all carbided and fucked up metallurgical but its not going to fail. If you dont have a band saw, buy your collector, its the most important part of the manifold to be perfect. I bought mine from DocRace it was about as good as I'd expect a $100 collector to be.

I v-banded everything, even buying them all from silicone intakes I have like $250 tied up in v-bands IIRC. Dont get the v-band flanges from silicone intakes, their inner diameter is too small, spend the extra couple dollars on vibrant ones. The silicone intake clamps are fine though. Just use pure nickle never seize on the threads.

If you are cutting all the pipe with a sawsall like I did, buy the Milwaukee blades they are the best bang for the buck when cutting the stainless tubes, those stupid expensive red devil carbide blades dont last much longer. Just buy like a 20 pack because they only make 3-5 good cuts in the 304 stainless weld ELs.

The efr6758 is worth every penny.