Quality Tig welding person wanted!

[David230]

thanks for your reply hotrodder, I was of the understanding that this was commonplace on stainless manifolds, especially with larger turbos and therefore the need for bracing or bracketing was required to prevent fatigue, cracking?

EDIT: ok hotrodder, rick. I've seen how bad these can be now and appreciate more what you are trying to say. What would you recommend?

 

[hotrodder]

I think Rick works in the tuning industry, probably seen more shoddy/cracked manifolds than me (which brands to avoid etc). Opinions vary, most of mine are in the thread i linked to, several other threads on the subject scattered round the forum...

Basically bracing/gussetting usually causes more problems than it fixes unless it's very well thought out to allow for expansion/contraction. Most cracked manifolds i've seen, usually glaringly obvious weld defects that the cracks grew from. Poor quality alloys may play a role, despite being 'T304' most of the cheap manifolds weld quite differently to domestic 304.

Many others reckon that they're just not made 'heavy enough', certainly using thicker wall tube/pipe seems to help. There's also the argument that the temos involved are at/beyond the upper limit for 304/316 stainless. Personally i think that the heavier wall tube is just more forgiving than 16swg tube- i've modified several cosworth long branch 304 manifolds, all were 16swg as were my mods. Never been asked to repair a cracked one of those...

 

[Rick]

thanks for your reply hotrodder, I was of the understanding that this was commonplace on stainless manifolds, especially with larger turbos and therefore the need for bracing or bracketing was required to prevent fatigue, cracking?

EDIT: ok hotrodder, rick. I've seen how bad these can be now and appreciate more what you are trying to say. What would you recommend?

If a manifold has got a brace on it then general rule is to avoid it, it's usually a sign of them trying to make things stronger, but the braces do not help at all, they expand at different rates, or try to restrict expansion so lead to more cracks.

I think Rick works in the tuning industry, probably seen more shoddy/cracked manifolds than me (which brands to avoid etc). Opinions vary, most of mine are in the thread i linked to, several other threads on the subject scattered round the forum...

Basically bracing/gussetting usually causes more problems than it fixes unless it's very well thought out to allow for expansion/contraction. Most cracked manifolds i've seen, usually glaringly obvious weld defects that the cracks grew from. Poor quality alloys may play a role, despite being 'T304' most of the cheap manifolds weld quite differently to domestic 304.

Many others reckon that they're just not made 'heavy enough', certainly using thicker wall tube/pipe seems to help. There's also the argument that the temos involved are at/beyond the upper limit for 304/316 stainless. Personally i think that the heavier wall tube is just more forgiving than 16swg tube- i've modified several cosworth long branch 304 manifolds, all were 16swg as were my mods. Never been asked to repair a cracked one of those...

As above, i've measure material thickness as thin as 1.2mm been used, another reason is they "polish" the runners, so the welds are thinned even further, if this was undercut to start with it means they will remove material from the pipe around it.

Generally speaking avoid all ebay manifolds, if something is too cheap to be true like anything its for a reason. Most of the Jap stuff is the same but massively overpriced. I.e. HKS etc, but you probably won't see these been in the rover game.

 

[David230]

Thanks Rick, for the explanation.