Thread: TurboFX & CTD-FAB Thread

Lately we have been swamped with part builds and projects. I thought a fab thread would be a cool way to let everyone why we are making so much noise over here at the shop. I share a shop with my brother Vicente (vince) aka CTD FAB so I'll be throwing in some of his work too.

Here's a set of F430 challenge car headers Vince designed and private labels for another shop. I helped him out with this last pair by TIGing all the runners. We had the exhaust head flanges water jet and made the rest in house from raw materials.







We use a Miller Dynasty 200DX w/ high speed pulse settings of around current=65, 225 pps, 60% peak time, and 45 % background for thin wall tubing. These were with 0.045 filler.

I came...

Must be nice to work with flat plane V8s when making headers.

sure is!

We had a customer stop by early last week with an oil pan that had seen better days. This pan is off a Chevrolet LS engine that has been swapped into a Chevelle. Story has it, that a rod decided to make a break for the outside world and left the motor after a brief stint @ 8K RPM. As you can tell from the following images, the stock pan has been modified for the swap into the Chevelle. We were able to salvage the modified sheet metal and graft it onto another unholy pan. Both pans were used and had a bit of oil soaked into them which always makes for an adventure when TIG welding cast aluminum. The repair came out pretty good though and the customer was pleased.

Cracked Al oil pan


As received, soaked in oil.


The salvaged sheet metal after a bit of cleaning.



The new old stock oil pan prepped for surgery.



And here we have the finished repair.


Also welded on the inside for leak free peace of mind.

I love seeing that kind of stuff with the oil pan nicely done.

What do you use to clean the pipe before you guys do the welds?

Thanks! We use a wire wheel mounted on a bench grinder to clean up the stainless tubing before it's welded. It gives it a nice brushed finish if you wire wheel the entire tube. On those headers, we only cleaned the weld joints because they were going to be ceramic coated. Right before we weld anything, we wipe down the part with a rag and denatured alcohol just to make sure it's really clean.

CTD Fab working a pair of headers for a Chevy Nomad w/ a LSX engine swap. All the fabrication is done off site using our mobile capabilities. We should have them TIG welded by early next week.

No wonder you can't hear us when we call