Re: Is anyone building turbo headers from 16ga 304?
 

You got it.
rawr take a collecter and grind the flashing off of it so the base metal at the weld joint at any section is no thicker than the thickness of the pipe.
You can leave the flashing, it doesn't do anything aerodynamically, doesn't do anything helpful for the weld either. Gives you more room to tie into under the root of the weld - yet that does nothing once it's full-pen. The maximum cross section at the thinnest part would be the thickness of the pipe wall from the toes of the weld measured in a line to the center radius of the corrisponding pipe.

One reason you would want a full-pen in this case would be that if the underside reinforcement is tied into the basemetal correctly (be it lay-wire or dipping a keyhole). It will eliminate a poor edge on the weld toes that can develope a fracture along the toe of the weld.


That and washing the sidewalls of your welds down too thin are likely the two biggest "nail in the coffin" mistakes that let collectors fail noone ever cares to talk about. Not so much of a problem on schedule-10 - there's just so much material there the failure will take so much longer to develope.

Re: Is anyone building turbo headers from 16ga 304?
 

what are the advantages of using 16ga? (advantages for using schedule 10? )

Re: Is anyone building turbo headers from 16ga 304?
 

16ga is lighter & cheaper, takes less time & less material to weld.
For your intended use you need to go with schedule-10.