I just realised that I have never updated you guys on here with my 16V Syncro manifold build. I’ve posted about it elsewhere, so here’s a bit of a copy and paste. I hope this helps others who are considering the same project.
Initially I made a jig to hold the downpipe flange in the right place on the back of the 16V engine. To do this I built a jig that mounts between the rear engine mount lugs and flange on the 8V Syncro manifold on the back of the G60 block. Then moved that across to a 16V engine.
My friend Alan Lawrence designed the flanges for me. These were then water jet cut out of 12mm 316L stainless by Waterjet Precision UK Ltd (www.cncwaterjet.co.uk).
All Schedule 10 pipe fittings and a length of straight (all 316L stainless) were obtained from http://www.allstainlessltd.co.uk/.
As an alternative to the drama of having to argon purge inside the tubing, I decided to try out a product from the US called Solar Flux instead. It’s usually pretty expensive but I got it very well priced from PCES. It works very well. The reason you gas purge inside stainless steel tubing is because the reverse side of the weld ‘sugars’ very severely when exposed to the air inside. Therefore, you need to have argon on both sides of the weld — argon via the TIG welder as you normally would, and argon fed via the inside of the tubing. However, Solar Flux is a powder you mix with methanol into a paste and apply that to the reverse side instead. Million times easier than purging. It does leave a funny and extremely tough glassy residue though, which you would probably want to grind away if the manifold is being used for a turbo to avoid the risk of it forming debris.
I arranged this setup to enable me to mark a perfectly true radius cut on the pipe fittings.
Not the tidiest TIG welding on stainless but I’ve definitely improved as I’ve worked on it. I find the only way to improve with a technique like TIG is to actually try to properly make something, rather than just sit there making fillets on a scrap of steel.
