Looking good man, that's a lot of work going into this car. It's gonna be awesome when this is all put together!

 

You too. You're a little ahead of me. While we're kind of outsiders to the road race crowd and dont get jerked off as much as some of them we have the two most ambitious builds going on that I've seen.

I got the turbo manifold as done as I could on a single tank of argon. Back purging is expensive. Everything is tacked that isnt finished. I'm running out of time though, its going to take a month at Swain.

I bought this gem. Now I can actually cut like straight. Its a godsend for doing cuts mid bend with the miter guide I can eyeball the high point of the bend while at the angle and basically get a round profile at the cut.



FIguring out wastegate placement on manifold, its less than optimal but better than most.




You can see where I got better coping the pipes with the plasma cutter.




3.5" downpipe *******



EWG merge closer than I'd like, but super low angle, and also **** you 3.5" downpipe.




And welded up as much as I could with my 120cfm tank. I figured out later that I needed to go slower with my size gas lens to not have the welds get grey.



Dat back purged inside of the weld.

 

P@ said it best. This is a thread i love reading.

 

Finished the manifold and downpipe welding. Was running out of gas again and had to drop the back purging half way through doing the downpipe. :( I had a weird issue with the weld cracking joining the pipes to the flange, you could watch the bead on either side of the crack cool at different rates. I ended up just having to go over those spots multiple times and using a bunch of filler for that to not happen. :( Anyways it should be showing up at swain on wednesday.

 

I picked up some solar flux specifically to use for the downpipe. I blow through gas backpurging exhaust. Only on the mani this time.

 

How well did the solar flux work? I hear mixed results on it, also heard to not breath it.

 

No idea I'll let you know tomorrow.

 

Haha, ok. I've got to use it on the full exhaust because I'm doing the FAE FAE 3.5" MONSTER DONG EXHAUST.

 

I wanted to do 3.5" exhaust. But the prices for mandrel bent 3.5s is insane.

I know @leboeuf used it on his stuff with success.

 

Mandrel 3.5 was also hard to find. I ended up dropping like $400 at summit to get bends. Columbia mandrel didnt have any.

BTW summit racing sells BOMB *** interlocking Vbands with super heavy duty clamps. I wish the efr outlet vband was interlocking.

 

Yup. Not worth it to me. Weird how much cheaper 3" is.

 

And 3.5 mufflers are harder to find. All the reivews on them are like, yup made my powerstroke sound great. I figure its worth it for me because of the 2.5 and 7163.

 

Is there no big straight through magnaflow like everyone uses on 3.0"?

 

I got social mediaed callededed.
Yes Solar flux works awesome. You'll need to mess with the ratio of methanol to flux powder until you get a solid painted surface.
I used a small natural bristle brush and painted every joint on my sectioned exhaust.

It worked well enough to where I would never consider back-purging something the size and thickness of an exhaust pipe.
On a schedule 40 manifold? I'd need to experiment before saying anything. There's a lot more haz/joints/etc going on.

Oh and it burns a vibrant orange color while you're welding. It's pretty, but it does make the puddle a little harder to read.
I have some pics of the results somewhere in my build thread.

 

For tubing, such as a downpipe, what if you cannot reach the inside of the joint with a brush? Will it work well enough to coat the inside of both exhaust tubes before joining them, and glob it on enough that when you mate the two together it'll get full coverage? Do you know if it'll still be effective after it's fully dry? Like if it was painted on one day and welded the next.

 

Yes, paint both ends, wait for it to dry (fast with methanol), tack together, finish welding whenever you get to it.
The coating burns as you're welding and emits the shielding gas.

 

Is that plate Aluminium? If so, it could have heat-sinked the flange all too well.

 

It's 304. Some pro guys seem to prefer aluminum for their clamp plates though, so idonno.

Aiden, I was looking at the under 100 dollar bucks range, magnaflow too expensive for me. And I'll physically end up making a custom muffler later in the season. I ended up buying a Dynomax ultra flow to use.

 

Now that the manifold is done I really just have a ton of small projects until it gets back.

Couldnt find the proper calibration or even figure out how to wire the 3.5 BD sensor correctly so I just ******* bought the "bolt on" 3bar GM tmap. My bolt ons always require welding.



I moved my PS lines inside the frame rail and then mounted them and the fuel lines with industrial grade ****. The brackets are only sheet metal screwed in until I buy a mig welder or the next time I take the carpet out of the car, then I'll weld the bases of the clamps to the floorboard. You can still do pullups on the brackets.





Thats where the oil drain is. Its not below the level of the oil when the engine is running.



Intercooler parts came in, rest of the exhaust parts came in. I'll thrash on it next weekend and probably get it close to starting, then start it the weekend after using the stock manifold that was bolted to the engine when I picked it up from the junk yard.

 

Radiator to intercooler ratio seems a little silly.



Of course the intercooler is about an inch too wide, didnt get the right measurements from the website for the end tanks. Also one is warped bad, so that's getting returned.

Got the upper radiator hose done. Thats the ranger upper tube all cut up and some random piece of hose that I think came from this engine and whatever car it was in.



Please dont make fun of me.



I also realized that I forgot to block off the speedo port on the T5. Thats a random piece of MIC-6 cast aluminum plate that was in the shop, should work.



Maybe I can start it next weekend. If it starts I'll finish putting the wiring harness into the silicon tape, after I do a burnout.