projekteg

well, many of you may see the ssautochrome (a.k.a. ssautoshit, ssaoutpoop, ssautocrap, ssautogenitalwarts, etc., etc.) manifolds and be thinking "that looks like a very nice piece, and very cheap as well, but everyone says they're crap ". well, consider this a full review/write up on the piece of ---- itself. you can pick up one of these mani's for about 175 which isn't a bad price for a nice looking, stainless, external wg flanged manifold. i bought one b/c my custom manifold didn't fit like it was suppose to, so i was in a bind and needed something quick and cheap. as soon as i got it, i slapped it on, it had two weak braces between the turbo flange and exhaust flange. well, one day when i was under the hood, i noticed that one of the braces had completely fallen off, oh well, no big deal, no problems as of yet. about 4 mos. down the road (yep, it lasted 4 mos. with no problems), i hear a rattling noise from under the hood, and getting very bad exhaust leak. i pop the hood expecting to find some loose bolts on the turbo, but to my surprise, the manifold was cracked on every runner (right on the welds where they met the flange), and in one spot on the collector, the rattling i was hearing was the remaining brace, one of the welds had come loose. my opinion is that it would never have cracked if the braces had not broken, i mean it had a full exhaust, turbo, and wg hanging off of it and reaching heats in excess of 1000°F. so to avoid this head ache, before you slap your ssautoshit mani on, go ahead and brace her up better and reinforce all the welds and it should never break.

this is the last remaining brace (i had already welded it back on and reinforced all the other welds before i decided to take pics)



here, you can see that i had already reinforced the two middle runners, compare them to the two outside runners and tell me which one looks stronger.



as you can see, i welded in another support (after i reinforced the existing one on the left, and then joined the two, i also welded in a support from the wg flange to turbo flange to support the wg), the steel bar can be had at lowes for about 5 bucks.



here's a better shot of the wg brace



if you take the time and spend a couple bucks to do this, your ssautoherpes mani should last just as long as any other manifol, it may not be quite as pretty now (although, i'm sure most of you can weld better than me, so maybe it will), but it will be worth the piece of mind.

btw, i'm holding the manifold with my feet b/c it's pretty ------ hot from welding it.

quadnie

nice writeup buddy.. the damn thing has no more bling value tho

projekteg

sure it does, it's only ugly from the bottom

quadnie

you should email the dick selling these on ebay this writeup.. let him know that his design is flawwed!

projekteg

oh, i'm sure he knows, everybody on here use to send him hate mail telling him he was piece of ----, especially when he started selling his stuff under different names.

quadnie

guy is raping the masses and making lots of money at it. How thin is that stainless steel anyways? I bet it's a really poor grade. I'm no expert in metalurgy (I should really take a class in it) but that thing just looks like ***.

projekteg

it's not too heavy, but my honest opinion is that it will last as long as you want it to if you reinforce it. mine lasted 5 mos. no problems, then the shitty welds on the braces came off and in less than a day, it was cracked to ----.

quadnie

and then you just mig welded mild steal to it?

projekteg

damn straight.

quadnie

and what did you use for shielding gas? 75 argon/25 co2? Did you crank the juice up all the way on the welder.. how many amps was the welder?

The point I'm getting at is I'm wondering how long it will hold since there are a shitload of variables involved here.