Another money pit

Small progress, brace and hat installed.

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Made steel bulkheads for the rad support 4.5” id. Also, made an alum stand off for the BOV. I tacked it up then chickened out welding it ( don’t want to melt it down!). Need a few more days of practice doing 1/4” t-joints to get confident in my settings and skill.

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Made an adjustable fence for my HF bead roller. One sided fence only means you can only crank one way while working the metal. Intercooler inlets and blower 180. I may make billet intercooler inlets, not sure.

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I have to learn to plan better, switching back and forth with the vice and rotary table gets old fast.
 
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I’m starting to think of this car as a barn find.

Thanks Kevin, the swag stand is working great for intercooler tubing with a few mods. 3” angle iron would have been better for making the table bigger, but 2” is working. The two sides on the slide keep the tubing from rolling when cutting and since they are 1/2 the diameter flipping 180 deg is easy.


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Getting some better welds on these pie cut 90’s. They need to go from vert 90 deg to horz 90 to get through the rad support, so two transition pieces left to make.

This 180 needs to be split and widened an inch or two.

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Looks like the HF bead roller worked pretty well. Nice job on the turbo ducting.
 
The bead roller works great once you do the YouTube mods (reinforced base).

This hf bandsaw is great. I’m tempted to grab another on sale for hand held. There is bi___hing on line about the hf blades, but at 7$ each, I can’t complain. Can cut a lot of alum, steel wears them out a lot faster. Swag should add the premade table extensions (angles). It really increases table size easily.


I forgot to mention, holding the pie cuts together with clamps is impossible, but safety wire works great until you get your tacks on.


One other thing I learned after getting 3 damaged intercooler cores over a period of 2 months, maybe they should package these. All three were shipped in a cardboard box with no packing. They finally refunded my money, I guess it was easier than having the shipping dept do their job. I will order directly from vibrant and request packing.

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Summit racing has a pick-up option and has a store an hour or two away. So that is how I’ll get an undamaged core.
 
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I found even crummy welds don’t look too bad after running them over the buffing wheel. Can’t believe how light this tube is when done.

I got a nice tubing bender and started a blower belt guard using 1/2” chrome moly tubing. First bend is complete.
 
rtj said:
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I found even crummy welds don’t look too bad after running them over the buffing wheel. Can’t believe how light this tube is when done.

I got a nice tubing bender and started a blower belt guard using 1/2” chrome moly tubing. First bend is complete.
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Very nice. That is one of those things that is way harder than it looks.
 
Thanks BBShark, it looked pretty bad until I polished it. The little bandsaw and Lincoln welder really helped. Plus, I finally started to get the feel for aluminum. I behaves so much different than steel. Still not stacking dimes, but hopefully they’ll pass my home-brewed pressure test next summer.


Next project, ready for tacking. The mill-drill and bender were key. Giving my eyes a rest before doing more aluminum tubing.


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rtj said:
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I found even crummy welds don’t look too bad after running them over the buffing wheel. Can’t believe how light this tube is when done.

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Looking good. :thumbs:

Most of my '69 exhaust is aluminum tubing. Four inch elbows were too damn pricey for my taste, so I did a similar pie cut thing. Works just fine.

Keep up the good work.
 
69427 said:
rtj said:
Looking good. :thumbs:

Most of my '69 exhaust is aluminum tubing. Four inch elbows were too damn pricey for my taste, so I did a similar pie cut thing. Works just fine.

Keep up the good work.
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Thanks, I keep thinking about alum sidepipe mufflers. Yes, pie cuts are pretty good once you try them. It has me thinking of custom headers.

Blower belt guard progress. 1/2 inch chrome moly tubing welded up and this think is solid.

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The belt guard turned out better than expected, now to v-band the blower while it is off.

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Well, here was my first attempt. Welded 1/8 in thick vband onto adapter, which gave 0.31 in wall thickness. This was taking too much heat, so cut the tacks and will step the adapter so I have roughly 1/8 in thick wall to weld.

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I spent a long time trying to weld these nipples on the valve covers from inside. Pulled the valve covers off and welded them on from the top. Also, threaded some holes for 8-32 so I can make some wire stand-offs.

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There is a meme in this: I’ve seen your aluminum welding, you’re getting a polisher for Christmas.

Here is something I’ll share:

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HF sells diamond grinding wheels, so I bored them out on the lathe and mounted them on this mini grinder. Works great for tungsten tig elements. Hit them on the belt sander to remove alum, then point them on here.
 
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If everything goes okay, a few more posts on intercooler weld up and odds and ends. I need the energy of some of these other guys (and less yard work ).
 
I hear ya. My wife is a big time gardener and most of the last month has been cleanup and prep work for spring. No time for the car :banghead:
 
I hear that, I’ve been cutting up dead trees and burning out some old stumps on rainy days.

I’m making progress but was starting to have doubts. Then I saw a couple of YouTube videos on welding. I need to go up to 1/8 tungsten and follow what this guy does.


[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWG1f5e7HEU&t=338s[/ame]
 
Picked this up off FB for $350. About what a core costs. I think I’ll go from 3” to 3.5” .

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Needed a tight radius after the blower.

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Trimmed it a bit to be 90 degrees.

Finally figured out how to fixture this a trim the ends even. There are studs in the table doing most of the work to hold it.

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Well, I’d rather do it myself and learn, than pay someone to do it. I’m getting faster as I go along, but need to force myself to get better welding. I realized I was treating it too much like brazing and started watching some of the 6061 channel lately.

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The black stuff is from the polishing compound, I haven’t got it all cleaned up yet.
 
Thanks, but need to improve my alum welding. I’m starting to anticipate how it will behave. I always felt it unpredictable compared to steel.

I’m just going to run a straight pipe for starters, no intercooler. Low boost so it should not matter. Mock up:


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