I'm fabbing up my exhaust and wanted to do some nice slip fit joints, even for the welds. I bought a nice tailpipe expander and with my 350ft/lb impact wrench it was absolutely worthless. I bought a nice 700ft/lb ingersoll rand impact gun and can make slightly more progress, but its still a no go.

I can only expand 1/4 to 3/8 from the edge of the pipe. I've seen some guys make two cuts in the pipe and then use and expander with an 18v drill... On a piece of test pipe I made progressively longer cuts and tried to expand the pipe. With 4 6" cuts, I can expand the tip as much as I want, but it is a cone shape and stretch to 3" inner diameter at 2-3" of depth leaves a 1/4 gap at the cuts...

What gives here? I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure it out.

 

just run down to the exhaust shop and put it on a hydraulic

 

That's probably a better solution

But I still wanna know! hehe

 

Try heating it maybe with a torch.. Could help some.

-Lurius

 

Use a propane torch. You should need to heat the whole area of metal, that way the heat makes the entire area of pipe change it's integrity.

 

How hot do I need to get it? I have an oxy/acet torch. Does it need to just be hot to the touch or glowing?

 

just to be on the safe side make it glow

 

Metal won't "soften" enough to expand unless it's changed to red/orange, but it's going to melt the o-ring on the expanding tool. I bought one of those too and about the only thing it's good for is fixing clamp crimps, or dents from dropping the pipe. Won't do crap for expanding it. It takes WAY to much force to stretch 16ga. metal that far.

 

easiest thing to do is get a ratchet and a 3' pipe and make easy work of it

or go to the hydraulic unit

 

i bought one too and it is pretty well useless...waste of $35 or whatever it costs