Grade of aluminium for an Inlet manifold

[Paulbarrett]

hi guys,
Wome experts on here I can see, need some help in chooosing material,
What grade of aluminium would recommended for building an inlet manifold for a supercharger application onto a V8.
Will be tig welded. So I guess ductile, but what are people's experiences?

 

[Richard.]

I'd say a 6063 with a 4043/5356 filler material.
6061 is more of a common extrusion but iirc the 6063 is a better grade to work with as far as bending and forming of tube.
It's heat treatable too.
if your going to be getting into more complex shaping and working a 1*** or 3*** could be a better choice for it
Iirc 3*** series work hardens as you form and bend it.
The man to really ask is @hotrodder. It's right up his street as its Alu and automotive. I'm quite limited in Alu grade knowledge and what I do know generally comes from asking questions like yourself.

 

[hotrodder]

All metals work harden, the 5xxx series typically work/strain harder more quickly than other flavours of ally especially the 1xxx or 3xxx

A lot of the time specific alloy choices are kinda made for you, extrusions for example... tube, angle, U profiles etc are effectively only available in 6082-T6 and/or 6063-T6 for the most part

If it's an American V8 then presumably we're talking rectangularish ports so you're folding/forming the runners in halves (lengthwise) from sheet instead of using round tube. More choice of flavours if that's the case and any of them will be fine. If you're putting lots of boost on it then regardless of ally flavours any issues are more like to be design based... stuff like a simple box shaped plenum with sharp corners is gonna flex more than a design that adds stiffness through geometry for example

For the mounting flanges something harder makes most sense... 6082-T6 / T651 is harder to 'dink' and machines waaaaaaaay nicer than say 5083-O which is one of the other common choices when shopping for some ally plate in the 6 - 12mm thickness range

 

[Paulbarrett]

What a man!
Thanks for that, we have gone down the t6 route with the flange, as that's all the guy that's cutting them for me uses.