material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

I am planning for a header build My project car is a 97 Audi A4 1.8L and I want to build a manifold for my Garrett GT3076R with Tial (full V-band) turbine housing to work best on. I'm looking for as much power as I can possibly squeeze out of this setup, and will be tracking the car regularly (road course)

I am stuck on whether to use 304 1.5" 16ga , 304 1.25" schedule 10 or 1.5" sch 10? Burns Stainless suggests 321 stainless, but that's just out of my league. The overall weight isn't really that important, what IS important to me is the integrity of the header. -I can see how bigger is stronger, but I can also understand how thicker material could run into heat cycleing issues. -I live in Florida, where it's hot as hell most of the time, my car is being built to the max, and I race it, + drive it very hard all the time almost every day.

I've had a few (reputable companies) tell me VERY different things about my Tial turbined snail also. I've been told that it will require a totally different collector design, I've also been told that the collector design (angle) won't make any difference at all... From my point of view, it's a ------- turbo, and it won't make much difference... I just found a good how to on making collectors, and plan to mock a couple up tonight as soon as I can pry myself from the PC... I'm guessing it will boil down to what will fit reasonably, but was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts as to whether this turbine might require anything out of the ordinary in order to perform the best??/

Next is the head flange... mild steel or stainless? I hear good arguments for both and am wondering if anyone here has any advice they'd share?

And last of all, the actual welding... I can only MIG weld, and sch. 10 is too thick for my 110v Hobart/Miller. I am friends with a couple fabricators (30+ yrs experience each, both have their own shops, but neither make stainless turbo manifolds for a living... It is likely that I'll fit and prep everything, tack each joint together and turn the part over to whichever one of my buddys that will take on the project. Is welding together a properly fitted manifold well within the abilities of any professional welder, or is this something that that is more specialized?
I've already learned alot here, and am hoping to learn more by the end of this holiday weekend so that come Monday morning, I'll be placing an order for materials!


I also have a Tial 44mm wastegate that I'll be using for this setup. that too (as well as my Tial Q BOV are all V-band flanged, and the V-bands, -on every Tial product I have, appear to be an odd sizing... Can anyone here confirm this? I'd like to find a reasonable price for my flanges/clamps, as going through Tial would set me back over $100 for the turbine inlet and turbine outlet flanges alone (one flange and one clamp each. -spendy as hell)

I look forward to meeting some of you, and anxiously await any responses you might make. As you can see, I'm new at building headers, and have a LOT of questions to find answers to before I can go any further. Thanks in advance

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

first thing, whats a "Tial turbined snail"

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

Tial makes a V-banded inlet turbine housing. Its pretty badass.

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

Use schedule 10. Heat cycling is actually less in a hot environment like Florida. It's worse up north where manifolds get taken up to operating temperature and dropped down to 20 degrees in the matter of an hour.


Your parts list makes it seem as if you're interested in owning all really nice stuff so it just might be better in the long run to have someone who knows what their doing build it and save yourself the headache. It's going to be easier for someone to throw it all together in a show than it is if you try to do half the work your self and take it in to be welded. Try to make a jig of how you want your turbo to sit in relation to the head with references for waste gate placement and try to communicate with someone on how you want your down pipe built.


If you're down with hood nasty HMT ----, buy sched 10, do a wide bevel on it and multi pass and you should get enough penetration with your 110 welder and it will save you some coin.

I TIG welded my manifold and it still is contaminated to ---- because I still suck at TIG welding. It would have been cheaper in the long run for me to just have had someone else build it all but I like tinkering with things so I chose the difficult route.

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

dude theres plenty of audi turbo manifolds (STOCK ONES) that you can use. save yourself a lot of headache and just get one of those.
then you can choose whatever turbo to use.

thats the easiest ticket my friend. then you'll be turbo'd in no time.

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

His baller turbo won't fit on a stock manifold.

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

sch-10. I wouldn't trust 16ga on a track car unless the welder is experianced.
Flange, MS/Stainless whatever you want to do. MS will fare better against warping as you weld it and will be what 1/3-1/4 the cost. Stainless will be baller taller.
MIG is perfectly fine for the manifold. Your 110v will weld it fine. There is no limit to the amount of passes you can use to make a weld. Aslong as they are positioned correctly, no impurities, undercut, too cold, too hot, etc. MIG is natural blonde nipple hair. Easy easy flange welding, easy collector welding, getting a great welds on the piping can be tricky if you've absolutely never done anything circular before.
http://sweethaven02.com/ConstructTec...01/fig0320.gif
http://sweethaven02.com/ConstructTec...01/fig0315.gif

Is it okay for a generic welder to weld it? Sure if they dont suck and can weld pipe. Normally wouldn't care less, but if you choose someone else to weld it. Ask them BEFOREHAND how they want it tacked for a 1.5" schedule-10 pipe (0.109" thick wall). They may want B amount of root gap, C amount of bevel & D amount of feathering. They may not want any bevel, simple but weld with a J groove in it (i.e. pass a grinder disk along it to eat into it)
You'll save yourself alot of money that way.

You got any scrap (whatever you want) you can do a basic groove weld on & post that up? well tell ya real quick if you can honestly make a heavy duty use manifold or not without pouring tons of practice time into it.

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

Attachment 12538
Attachment 12539

Thanks for all the advice and suggestions. I ordered more than enough 1.5" sched. 10 304 pipe/fittings, plus a fuckload of 3" 16ga 304 for the DP and exhaust system.
I wrote a .dxf file last night, so my buddy can waterjet the head flange (out of MS as per your advice, Toysrme) but am going to try MIGing this one together, pending feedback from weld sample pics I'll post up as soon as the materials arrive. -Regardless of what's "easier" I really want to make this myself.

The fittings are butt-weld 90's + 45's which are beveled at the joint edges. Also, I plan to make a backpurge setup following the writeup here on HMT. That said, I'm presuming I'll want to fit the pieces tightly together as opposed to leaving a gap. Is this correct?

Attachment 12540
Here's a sample MIG weld of mine on some mild steel box tubing.

Anyone know where I can find V-band flanges/clamps that will fit my Tial turbine inlet/outlet? It's a fucked-up size on the turbine inlet and outlet, and ATP Turbo is asking $140 for two flanges and two clamps which seems akin to being ass raped...

Re: material, design, welding -need alot of help
 

i only tig weld but for mig i would leave probably 1 wire thickness between joints