My Stainless Manifold Build

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WideOpenThrottl

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Apr 22, 2007
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Well here is some pictures of the manifold that I built, still waiting to be polished of course. I built every thing myself from designing the head flange to CNC milling it out of 0.625" 304 stainless plate at my folk's shop, then tig welding it together. The pipe is 304ss schedule 40 and butt weld fittings.

Here is some pics of the way I went about it...

Flange has the rectangle ports to match the head then on the opposite side the pipe pockets were machined in so the fittings could drop in 1/4" to allow for fillet welds.

778503-R2-11-10A.jpg


Flange awaiting welding,

778503-R2-10-9A.jpg


Coping the fittings

778503-R2-07-6A.jpg


778503-R2-08-7A.jpg


Bolted up to the head

778503-R2-04-3A.jpg


Compared to stock

778503-R2-06-5A.jpg



Well I should be running my new engine with this manifold on the engine dyno here in 2-3 weeks. I am going to run it back to back with the stock manifold and possibly a ATS manifold comparison. It should move some serious air compared to the stocker.

I don't know the site's rules on this, but if anybody is interested I can sell ya the flanges steel or stainless now that I have the machine program written, just shoot me a pm.

Tim.
 
Wow. That makes mine look like Play Dough Day at kindergarten. How did you cope the fittings?

Oh, and was there a reason for using an undivided turbo flange?
 
Do your folks want to adopt?:hehe:

Looks awesome! Let us know how it does.:Cheer:
 
Great looking fab work! What do you do for a living? Did you grow up around a machine shop or just a hobby machinist?
 
Question- when people are making these, how come nobody is stepping the tube size, you have the same size tube from 1/6 as you do right where 1,2,3 meet up..is this to increase the pressure as it goes to the turbo for help with spooling?

If you could step it, if even by a half inch larger tubing at the turbo flange would this help to reduce drive pressure?
 
I don't know why you'd want to drastically increase volume. It all still has to squeeze past the same turbine wheel. More volume just means it has more space to fill before it does so.

Looks great, BTW. :clap:
 
Looks sweet! Not sure if it will effect anything, but I hear alot about these stainless manifolds cracking... would cuts through the flange between each cylinder help it "flex" a bit when it heats and cools? Also, I would coat it black if it was mine, not a big fan of bling...
 
JFlagg said:
Looks sweet! Not sure if it will effect anything, but I hear alot about these stainless manifolds cracking... would cuts through the flange between each cylinder help it "flex" a bit when it heats and cools? Also, I would coat it black if it was mine, not a big fan of bling...
Click to expand...


Mine hasnt cracked at the head, i had one crack where a weld meets the pipe in between the front/rear elbows turning down into the flange. I cleaned it up and put an ugly weld on it, it didnt turn out pretty, but it was hot and it has sealed up.

My issue is the warping from the initial welding and I cant keep it sealed at the head. I am going to try some of the multilayer gaksets from cummins and see if thats a little more forgiving than the single gaskets.
 
getblown5.9 said:
Mine hasnt cracked at the head, i had one crack where a weld meets the pipe in between the front/rear elbows turning down into the flange. I cleaned it up and put an ugly weld on it, it didnt turn out pretty, but it was hot and it has sealed up.

My issue is the warping from the initial welding and I cant keep it sealed at the head. I am going to try some of the multilayer gaksets from cummins and see if thats a little more forgiving than the single gaskets.
Click to expand...

I had a similar issue with the same manifold, to the point of blowing apart one of the mls gaskets. My fix was replace it with another mls gasket (the single layer sucked) and make studs to tighten the crap out of it! I just used allthread rod and it worked very well and was tight as could be during removal.
 
Let me pose another question...Why do these thin walled (in comparison to cast log manifolds) stainless manifolds take forever for EGT's to come down? Maybe its not the manifold but I remember when i was running 1600* down the pulling track after i unhooked it would take just a minute to get back down to 400* and then a few more minutes to get below 300.

Now with the stainless manifold, after unhooking I can drive back to the pits in 1st gear 4 low sometimes so the rpms are up and moving air thru the motor to help cool it with little fuel being injected and it takes 10 minutes of idling to get down to 400* even with the hood open. Ive seen my EGT's sitting at 1000* while idling in the pits after a hook. I know the p-pump is seeing hotter EGT's but it just takes forever to remove the heat from the manifold now.
 
TJ, in my experience with Bodie's header his header was much quicker to get to 350 or so than the pdi t4 manifold i've replaced it with. I have worked the the ports in this t4 manifold just a little bit on the head side too. For what it's worth I did place one of the manifold blankets on when installing the pdi t4 manifold.

Or were you saying the thin walled manifold compared to a stainless manifold?
 
im comparing the stainless tube manifold i have now to my old HTT cast 3-piece. its takes forever for the temps to come down with the tube manifold.
 
getblown5.9 said:
im comparing the stainless tube manifold i have now to my old HTT cast 3-piece. its takes forever for the temps to come down with the tube manifold.
Click to expand...

Cast iron has a thermal conductivity of over 3 times that of stainless steel.

How thick are your tubes?
 
This is what our's looks like polished still turned gold tint on our 3.0 truck.after 2 runs
PHTO0138.jpg

PHTO0139.jpg

Dale
 
Do y'all enlarge the bolt holes as you go outward from the center, and/or cut the flange between ports?

SS + solid flange equals some serious growing pains if provision for expansion/contraction isn't in place.

Looks great btw.
 
SPEEDSHIFT said:
Do your folks want to adopt?:hehe:
Click to expand...

x2!!!

WideOpenThrottl, where in MN do you live? Just curious...

getblown5.9 said:
Question- when people are making these, how come nobody is stepping the tube size, you have the same size tube from 1/6 as you do right where 1,2,3 meet up..is this to increase the pressure as it goes to the turbo for help with spooling?

If you could step it, if even by a half inch larger tubing at the turbo flange would this help to reduce drive pressure?
Click to expand...

Why waste the time when it is going to have to get necked back down to go through the turbo flange and exhaust housing? It looks like he has a t3 flange on there in the pics...

JFlagg said:
Looks sweet! Not sure if it will effect anything, but I hear alot about these stainless manifolds cracking... would cuts through the flange between each cylinder help it "flex" a bit when it heats and cools?
Click to expand...

I've heard some differing opinions about how to keep a stainless tube manifold from cracking, but my two most reliable sources both feel that if you backpurge while you're welding it that you should be fine. Both these guys are certified welders and have built plenty of turbo manifolds just like this one.
 
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