New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

We have some new options for manifold builders under development. With a new in house process we have successfully bent 1-1/4" sch 10 stainless bends on a 1D radius (1.660" OD x 1.660" radius). This radius is right between the current short radius (1.50") radius and the long radius (1.875").

I know for a lot of the manifolds we build, having legs on the bends would reduce the cost of building the manifold significantly. Also being able to source the proper bend angles on production manifolds will reduce the fabrication time. Combine that with a tighter radius easing fitment for tough manifolds .. This may drastically affect people's bottom line.

I'll update this thread as things become more concrete in terms of availability and pricing.

http://mandrel-bends.com/fittings/fittings.jpg

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Oh hell yes! I buy almost $1000 a month in schedule 10, and have been looking ta going to U bends becuase exactly as you say, it could nearly cut the number of piece needed per runner in half.

That's half as much welding and half as much cutting/fitup. That is huge on my bottom line. Definitely keep us posted- if the pricing is even remotely decent (and I know you guys have great pricing on 16ga mandrel bends) I am there.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

if you guys get solid bends i bet making a 'weld your own' pre-bent 4-1 ssauto knockoff style would make a few pennies in the pocket

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

We will do our best as we are competing with direct import china in the fittings market, but I would estimate that we will be comparably priced to the current "long" radius elbows. The current "short" radius being 2-3x the cost on average are ludicrously priced.

The elbows (with legs) will be just the cost of material more.

As for copied cdm copied love, one of our fabricators has already been drooling at the idea of doing just that.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Just always remember, you're competing against the midnight special from ace.
I swear to god, love both companies, both have always done me equally right, and Ive had both bend over backwards for me on shipping more than once... But first one to start selling 304 schedule-10 stainless at ace's (or better) pricing and aluminum, AND will sell small sheet aluminum get 100% of mine LoL!


The past year I've been going downtown and getting my schedule-10. Cost more than ace, but I get it when I want it LoL!

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

What is the midnight special? We will be as competitive as possible, but these bends are not available anywhere else so its not really comparing apples to apples. If you need something tighter but don't want to go to the super tight short radius, this is it.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

I admit it- I buy my sched 10 from ace.

Their "midnight special" is their 1.5" sched 10 elbows. They're pretty much always on sale for around $5.75

The tight radius bends are indeed crazy money. I avoid designs that require them at all costs.

Personally I don't particularly need anything tighter than the long radius bends (although a little tighter would be fine too).

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Depending upon how well this works, a high production set of dies for the 1.5 sch10 would enable us to at least meet $5.75/each and more then likely blow it out of the water by another 10-30%. The same could be said for the 1.25" sch10 that we are currently bending. (If this proves out and makes sense to drop $20k/set on a production dies for either or both 1.25 and 1.5 sch 10.) We'll just have to see how these do and go from there.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

So when you say "see how these do", do you mean how they do in your testing, or how they do in terms of interest/sales?

If you have any for sale I'd like to buy some. :)

BTW I don't know if this is Adam or not, but I am the guy Jonathan from R-Sport International emailed you about. Small world.
I have a 6 cylinder turbo header to do, with fairly small bores/ports, so I wouldn't actually mind using 1.25".

I'd need 20 bends and 8" feet of straight as a start. I don't mean to be pushy though - if it's all still in development that's cool too. PM or emial me if need be.

Thanks!

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

---- to the yeah. I dont build manifolds for a living but I find my self doing more and more latly and any thing to help save a weld and or a few welds would be bitchen.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

We've sent out some samples to a few of our manifold builder customers. I was hoping to get some feedback before we formally release them. We are still trying to decide what the ideal leg lengths for the fittings would be. So far the most popular leg length requested is 1-2" of material per side, but the longer the leg lengths the more expensive the fitting as its taking more material. I think we may settle for a median 1.5" per side, as we are only adding 3" (about $2.00 in material) to each bend.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

not to thread jack adam, but i'm getting into the pipe elbow market soon too. i posted a sample a while back and am getting my first batch either tomorrow or next week. i have to crunch some #'s still, but i should be able to beat ace's midnight special price. like you said though, this is a completely different market and i think something like this is long overdue. i'm sure they will sell well for you!

aaron

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Personally, a to me a 1" leg would not be useful.

Here is the thing- the legs need to be long enough to "replace" what would have been a straight section. So with 1" legs, any straight section of runner longer than 2" would still need a straight piece welded in- it's just be a shorter piece. That doesn't save any work.

I would say the average length of a straight section on my manifolds is around 60mm, or just over 2", so 1.5" legs would eliminate the majority of straight pieces from the manifolds- I have a couple designs that have the odd 90mm'ish straigh sectio, so I would still need small straight bits for those, but most of them are 40-60mm, so 1.5" legs would be good.

So I think 1.5" would be good. 2" legs would just create a lot of short scrap pieces.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

1.5" is what I'm thinking also. PM me your address and I'll send you a few samples.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Before you sell the first one, or whoever gets the samples.
Would you mind sawing the curve apart at several spots and putting a digi-caliper on the wall thickness at several angles. Prolly go down a couple hundreths - no biggie. I just wanna know.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Also, what finished edge are you going to be selling to we enthusiasts? If you are planning on giving us a groove AND If you've not picked the tooling to do so, Id love to see a 60* bevel with a 1/16" landing on it.
Or am I the only one that cares?

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

I'll have to bend more to measure one, but it will be similiar to existing pipe bends. I've got a sch 40 1.5 bend here that when cut at 45 degrees which is 0.132 outside and 0.174 inside. 0.132/0.174 ~ 25% material transference .. Sounds about right for the material and radius. (1.90" OD on a 2.25" radius). Actually since ours is an even tighter radius, I would expect maybe another 5% of transference.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

i think ill be picking up a few 180's off of you guys soon

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

keep this update Adam! ill order all piping we talked ago some time back , soon! ill build my ---- asap!

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

in for updates

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

this sounds good. any chance of doing 2" pipe with the same process? i have some 3000gt o2 housings to make and the tight bends would be nice. i have been trying to buy a donut and nobody will take my money

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

will the normal tight radius elbows not work?

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Stock o2 housing replacements? They need to be bigger then 2" ID. Most o2 housing replacements are 2.5" for that car. Why do you need such tight bends?

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Just waiting for feedback. We built a couple interesting manifolds from the stuff this past week ourselves.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Here's an example of a manifold that cannot be made with anything but these fittings unless its made log style. 5 cylinder hell. And no it doesnt touch, but its damn close.

http://mandrel-bends.com/fittings/holy-hell.jpg

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Cool- volvo 20 valve 5 cylinder. I have one of those on the go actually... ;D

I'm not working on anything that needs 1.25", I'd end up re-working my jigs for it if you end up selling it, but as it is I'm not sure i have much work I could use to "sample" it...

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

for some reason they want to have an open dump wastegate. that will eliminate a lot of the flow requirements and these will be made for turbos that use the stock turbine housing so there is no way they can make enough power to find the limits of 2" tubing. once the donut thing fell through with multiple companies, i lost interest. then i saw this post and it got me thinking about it again. im sure i could just order the fittings from ace or something, but i have gone to racing solutions for all of my pipe needs. figured i would keep it that way if i could

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

any eta's on a honda ram horn style kit? sounds very lucrative.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Ah.. JPDC made a product like that way back in the day that we manufactured for them (for that vehicle). They CNC'd the flange so the outlet for the wastegate had an independent discharge from the exhaust stream. On the reverse side of the flange they machined a lip that sat into the turbine housing and seperated the chamber. I believe those were 2.25" outlet and 2" dump though. There is far more room there then it seems. You could do it with just standard radius 2" od x 3" radius no problem. We still build tons of 3000GT parts we developed ... damn near 5 years ago now.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

I could pursue this better if I knew what exactly people wanted in a kit.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

log bent as one solid U from 1-4 and a short section of straight for 1 & 2 :y :y

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

That's easy enough to do.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

logs + hmt = <3

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

maybe if i had a car here in front of me to work with i could find a way to do it, but all i have are the stock pieces to copy. they are 2 stamped steel halves welded together. the bend in them is super tight. i made a tig out of the stock part and not i really cant get anything standard that i already have to make the bend. i already got glanges from Weir with 2 holes and i am going to weld in a divider to fit down into the turbine housing.

if i was making my own downpipes also, then it would be very easy, but i am trying to make this fit stock and aftermarket pipes

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Wow last time i bought 50+ of sch10 short radius 1.25 elbows they were less the $10 each ... I better buy more before they clue in :)


I think this is a great idea, the only problem I see is with the leg length. The advantage comes when you can completely eliminate needed to cut/weld a straight section, the problem is depending on the heading it can range from 1" to 6"

Either way I'm keeping an eye on this for next time I remake my personal header. If it goes well I might even put the silly thing into production :)

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

Doing them blind .. Yikes when you dont know the car. They don't have to be anywhere near that tight. Just make sure you hit the outlet location with just a standard 2.5" 2 bolt universal exhaust flange, that will allow you to mate up to stock and aftermarket downpipes. We have literally built hundreds of o2 housings for that car, trust me you don't need a bend anywhere near that tight.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

We are going to mass produce the 1.5" leg, but we are going to stock some odd ball leg lengths.

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

^ knockoff an ebay knockoff :)

Re: New pipe fittings for manifolds
 

nice work so far for the nwiners