Originally Posted by Inquisition

The welds obviously weren't backpurged so 99% penetration = sugaring. There was no sugaring, so that means there was less than 99% penetration. Also the welds are undercut(which you'd expect with a fusion weld). Because there is a slight gap between the two pieces, and you are not adding any material(ie filler rod) is physically impossible to get 100% penetration. 100% penetration would mean that since its 16 gauge material, where the weld is, there would be atleast .065" of material. Thats not the case, so its not 100% penetration. Its not 99%. The fact of the matter is, metal expands. Dump tubes have very odd heat cycles due to where they are located. Fusing the material together seems like a bad idea. Adding filler rod would add a lot more insurance to the weld. Fusing the material is increasing the chance of failure quite a bit.

PS: I don't give a ---- if hotrex has a sucessful business. Doesn't bother me in the least. What bothers me is his negligance when it comes to his customers. He brushes everything off as "its mint" and claims to know better. Then the process/parts fail, and their fucked. Its not the right thing to do.

Originally Posted by crx2fast

this was Josh posting under my name.. just so you know

Originally Posted by Inquisition

The welds obviously weren't backpurged so 99% penetration = sugaring. There was no sugaring, so that means there was less than 99% penetration. Also the welds are undercut(which you'd expect with a fusion weld). Because there is a slight gap between the two pieces, and you are not adding any material(ie filler rod) is physically impossible to get 100% penetration. 100% penetration would mean that since its 16 gauge material, where the weld is, there would be atleast .065" of material. Thats not the case, so its not 100% penetration. Its not 99%. The fact of the matter is, metal expands. Dump tubes have very odd heat cycles due to where they are located. Fusing the material together seems like a bad idea. Adding filler rod would add a lot more insurance to the weld. Fusing the material is increasing the chance of failure quite a bit.

PS: I don't give a ---- if hotrex has a sucessful business. Doesn't bother me in the least. What bothers me is his negligance when it comes to his customers. He brushes everything off as "its mint" and claims to know better. Then the process/parts fail, and their fucked. Its not the right thing to do.

Originally Posted by BoosTedZSix

i wouldnt necessarily call those welds sex.

Originally Posted by BoosTedZSix

i wouldnt necessarily call those welds sex.

Originally Posted by Inquisition

Hotrex, you're credibility is shot. You really don't have much of a clue. You just slap stuff together and say its "mint". The sheer fact you think its okay, would make me think the exact opposite.

Fusing material together like that is an okay method with low pressure/temperature applications. An example of which would be something like duct work for non hazardous fumes. Dumptubes are low pressure, but not low temperature. A decent beating will get the dump tube well over 700*F. Then the actual cooling down from that 700* to the temp in the engine bay will do its damamge. The material will begin to expand and fatigue. As the material expands, it will be weakest at that point because you didn't add filler rod and on some level the thickness of the material in that fraction of an inch will be significantly less than anywhere else on the material. Again, fusing material on an application that sees that kind of heat is a bad idea. If you did it with charge pipes and pressure tested afterwards, I would have no problem believing things would be fine. On a dumptube, I could see it easily failing.

As for crx2fast. You're wrong. Heat wears on material a hell of a lot more than 100-200* air and sub 40psi. The sheer fact that FMIC piping has couplers which allow the tubing to move back and forth with little to no stress is the reason why you can fuse the material and have minimal problems. The main concern with fusing charge piping would be pin holes causing pressure leaks. As long as you are sure the piping can hold pressure, you should be good to go. Would I suggest fusing charge pipes on higher pressure applications? No so much due to the fact if it did fail because you decided to fuse, it would be pretty ridiculous. I don't see any reason not to add filler rod when doing the welding regardless, but if you wanted a very smooth finish, fusing should work fine.

As for betting, I'm not betting on something I have little to no control over. It could crack 7 times and I would never hear about it. How do you guys know its getting 75% penetration? Did you guys buy a welding xray? Is this more "lets throw out random numbers to make it look like what we are doing is okay"? Face it, hotrex has a shitty track record. He needs to be told out right what he is doing is fucked up. He was told with block filling, resulted in his sleeves failing. Instead he insisted it was mint and other people on various web boards followed his lead. He was told when welding his turbo manifolds, when he would only do a single pass of 1/16" filler on .109" material. A number of his manifolds failed and cracked. He was told when he started this mess of a business. He ended up having customers waiting months when he claimed a week. Fact is, hotrex has a shittier learning curve than me. Its better to let him know outright what should or should not be done rather than having his shitty learning curve effect others who paid for his services.