Thread: Think I went with too big of a turbo...

Oh, didn't know you got one. Way cool! Airgas is the local "gas station" for me here.

I got my helmet at Lowes. It was around $100. Don't skimp on the mask. I've had a cheap one before that wasn't very good.

i like mixed argon and co2. what welding wire did they give you? where's my pic?

If you have a harbor freight they have auto darkening masks there for about 45-50 bucks. My uncle has had his for 3 years now and no issues, works every time and does the job and half the cost.

I'm hearing good things about tri-gas. Came with .023" mild steel wire. I'm going to order some .030 ss wire.



No Harbor Freight here, this place doesn't have anything good. Hence I have to build and weld it myself

You are right, welding steel is welding steel and a mig will work but the manifold is the first thing people notice after the turbo and personally I would like it to like nice and neat. I know V doesn't have much welding experience unless you got better than the last welding that I saw you do, so in order to make sure there are no leaks and no extra hassles to trouble shoot I would just tack it and have it tig'd nice and neat, then checked to make sure there are no leaks. Welding a manifold with a mig and having no leaks is a tough job for someone without much experience, hell even someone with experience. It is all up to V as it is his car. I just give my opinion on what I would do if it were my car. Everyone does things their own way and there is no right or wrong way to do it as long as it works. Personally I wouldn't even go as far as to swap manifolds quite yet but that is what V decided to do so more power to him.
Drew

Mind you you saw my welds with a $100 flux cored welder .

Practice on some scrap mate!

im gonna go with totaled on this one Vadim. Mock it up and tack weld it as best you can and have a shop finish up and tig weld it. I tried to do mine and even after hours of practice i could not get a nice smooth bead around the whole runner without having at least one or two pinholes and it looked like crap. I just cut everything back apart and sold it. It was too much of a hastle to get lined up right and so on.

I was just replying to a post on g20.net about the AEM wideband hookup and got me thinking about my wiring.

When I first installed the AEM wideband on my Sentra, I used the cigarette lighter for the power and ground. I noticed fairly inaccurate readings. After that I took the ground wire and spliced another wire and grounded it on the intake manifold where the ECU grounds at.

Now this time around I went straight to the point, where cigarette lighter gives the power and ran the wire to the intake manifold. I'm wondering if my ground wire might be not thick enough and is getting interference. I will try to resistance check it to verify.

Another thing, my Sentra had a ground kit installed, I do have one for the P11, but have been lazy to install it. Plus talking to some electrical folks, they mentioned having the ECU ground tied to the body ground is not a great idea (separating unimportant grounds like headlights from important ECU grounds).

I need to get my AFR's noted down, reground then try again and see if it changes.



Yup that's the idea, problem is finding some scrap SS. I did buy some extra el's so can practice on those.



I'll give it a shot, I don't give up that easily. If it fails then I'll go another route. From what I'm reading, TIG welds are more susceptible to cracks since the beads are smaller/thinner.

nope, it depends on what your welding. There is a reason why manifold manufacturers use tig welding, it seals better, uses less weld, stronger and can control penetration and coverage much better. Also looks way better. But a tig weld is just as strong as any other weld. Tig welding is more fusing the two existing metals together and adding a bit of filler in the mix of it to help do so. Again i would do some practice on some tubing off the car first and then see if you can get solid clean beads all the way around with no pinholes. Its pretty hard. I learned quickly that i have very little fabrication and welding skills.