Got time this Saturday to cut, fit, and weld the pipes for the drivers side in stainless. Found out that my v-band flanges are not stainless, so will have to order them from Burns Stainless this week so I can weld them to the collectors and the turbo pipe.

I fliped the pipes around from the original test header on the original post to make getting to the bolts on cylinders 1 & 7 easier.





Still need to finish sand them with the orbital and then take them to the buffer with compound to get the shine before welding them to the flange and collector. Maybe I can get to that during the week one afternoon.

 

Nice welds!

 

Those headers look awesome. That is gonna be one nice setup when its all together!

 

Been some time since I could work on the project. Got some time today, so pulled the engine to replace the oil pan with the Canton drag pan (had a circle track pan on as the canton would not fit, but moved the engine back 1" and made room for the drag pan so put it back on).

Spent the rest of the afternoon sanding the header pipes and doing initial buffing. Completed buffing all the pipes and collector for one side, have a few deep scratches as my 1st stage buffing compound is not agressive enough to can't get them out. So will have to do progressive wet sanding on those areas or go get an agressive compound to get them out, and then do the final mirror polishing this weekend.

 

beautiful!

 

looks nice, lota time polising, what do the insides look like? did you purge the tubes when you welded? How are you going to make the transition from the collector to the rectangle turbo flange? oh ya, and whats it going in?

 

I have two 80 Cu.ft Argon bottles, one for the tig and another for the purge. The headers are 1 3/4", so I cut a 1 5/8" stainless pipe and cap'ed it. Then threaded a nipple on it and attached it to the 2nd argon bottle. I then place a piece of 2" stainless plate on the opposite end, if possible I jam a heavy hammer against it, if I am welding in a position that won't work then I use good old duct tape. I run the purge at about 5 CFH, and I run the torch at 15 CFH, 55 AMPS, pulser @ 2 Hz, with 30 AMP on the down slope.

The collectors will have 3" Stainless V-bands, I have a 3" U-bend that I have cut in half so I have two 90 degree bends. I have collapsed the 90 degree end to an oval and have milled my T4 flanges so the oval'ed pipe can be inset and welded to the flange. It is going in a 1965 Chevy SWB Fleetside truck. You can see the truck at my CarDomain site, and the header progress on page 5.

 

Damn! It's gorgeous! Make me a twin turbo setup

 

you do know that no matter how polished your headers are, after the first hour of drive time they will be purple and eventually black right?

 

Those sure are pretty! But aren't they going to just turn brown when they get hot? That what all are SS race car headers do.