Onward with the output
I’ve been stressing about welding on stainless. Every forum I read says stainless is tricky, that it retains heat and could possibly warp easily. I blow holes through mild steel without any problems.
Doomed.
One handy tid-bit of info I read was that although stainless is a harder steel, I should use less amperage than I would for mild steel. How the hell that’s supposed to work, I have no idea.
I watch a Youtube from Mr. Tig and he’s demonstrating how to weld mild steel and stainless together. I don’t see anything that out of the ordinary. That’s comforting.
I know a lap weld is far easier than a butt weld. I already have the ball joint coupler fitted to the intermediate pipes that tie the headers to the X-pipe and there’s no further adjustment needed so I may as well start there.
I was expecting as much trouble welding the mild steel coupler to the Stainless Steel pipe as I did when I was welding the mild steel Y collectors to the headers but I don’t encounter any issues. I even use filler rod and I manage not to do anything ugly with it.
This gave my confidence a boost. I expected lots of contamination and burned metal, actually more like vaporized metal.
With good results with dissimilar metals, I felt a lot more relaxed about the pipes coming out of the X-pipe.
It would be cocky of me to just put the pipes together and do a full weld, What if I don’t have the angles right? I tacked the pipes together.
With the pipes back together and 5 inches removed from the overall length, I test fit the exhaust and something’s not right.
I took all of my measurements from the left bank of the exhaust. I assumed the right was identical. I have no idea what happened but the left side exhaust is now one inch shorter and the right is spot on. WTH?
I play around with the idea of cutting the tack welds on the left slip joint and pulling the output pipe out by about an inch. That seems too hack, even for me. I have some precut one inch pieces of stainless, I’ll weld that to end that goes into the slip joint. Naw, that’ll cause a mismatch elsewhere. I decide to add the one inch piece to the end of the left pipe and it works. I BUTT WELDED IT!!! Can you believe that? I did a fusion weld to avoid a raised bead. I wanted to make sure the slip joint on the muffler would fit over it.
With most of the system in place I check to see how well the pipes are tucking up underneath the car. See that little bendedededed downturn? It actually sits lower than this looks. Magnaflow built this particular X-pipe with the input pipes at a downward angle.
The X-pipe is upside-down here so the input pipes are pointing in the wrong direction from what I’m bitching about…
I assume it’s to clear some components on a stock 69/70 Mustang that I don’t have any longer. Yeah, those angled pipes have gotta get straightened out.