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How or what methods do you use to cut, measure, for your merge pipes, other tubing needs, ect, that are clean, tight fitting that makes welding easy????
What's the secret?
After doing a few set ups I was able to get a pretty good eye for where cuts needed to be made, but its still going to be a lot of trial and error. I use a sawzall to cut all my tubes and then I'll square them up on a belt sander to get a nice fit up.
There are lots of methods. I use a pipe master for some stuff. Sometimes I make a template using an online tube miter calculator. About half of the time I can just eyeball it.
I usually cut with either my bandsaw or a aluminum blade in chop saw if it's aluminum. I rarely use the hotsaw anymore. Sometimes I'll use a tube notcher.
Nice tight fit up is key to getting a good result. Square flats on a belt sander and save old flapper wheels for cleaning up contour cuts.
You quickly learn ways to orient the bends to avoid difficult welds and get the best looking result.
Basically do it a bunch.
And if you have to cheat a bend, space the pie cuts nice and evenly.
If fit up is tight enough, I’ll tig by fusing on 16 ga. As far as cutting, I built a set of headers with a 4.5” cutoff wheel. Pretty crude, but they turned out nice. I recently put together a stand forportable band saw. Should’ve done it a long time ago. Here’s a shot of the header.
If fit up is tight enough, I’ll tig by fusing on 16 ga. As far as cutting, I built a set of headers with a 4.5” cutoff wheel. Pretty crude, but they turned out nice. I recently put together a stand forportable band saw. Should’ve done it a long time ago. Here’s a shot of the header.
Here’s the saw mounted up.
nice headers. I’ll post my setup when I get home. I have a portable bandsaw mounted too with a foot pedal to control it. I also have a full size band saw, I use the little one for small free hand cuts and the bigger one for my angle cuts and bigger pipes.
As far as the exhaust tubing goes, I got a box of plenty of mandrel bends so I had room for error. Cutting I used right angle grinder with cutoff wheel, chop saw, or plasma depending on what I was doing. And don't worry about fitting the pipes up perfectly, you can easily fill in gaps with a wire welder and make it look good and not have a ton of wire inside the pipe if you practice a bit.
Usually I eyeballed and just kept trimming until I got it where I wanted it. Rarely did I actually measure or do anything involving that much precision. Some stong "set up" magnets and straight edges can help sometimes too.
I use pool noodles to mock stuff up. I stuff pieces in the tubing to fit it together. Mark with a sharpie. Remove pool noodles and tack. Check fitment again and adjust if necessary
I use a Milwaukee portable band saw mounted to a Swag Off-road band saw table. It looks similar to the small band saw setup posted above. It makes nice and clean cuts. I normally just eyeball the cuts for the most part. If I need it to be perfect, I use paper templates to mark the angles on the pipe and mark it with a sharpie.
Nice headers and band saw stand.
I use a chop saw but am looking at getting a portable band saw & stand as above. As mentioned use flapper wheels, they work great for little or heavy clean up. I also use a tie wrap to slide around mandrels then mark with a sharpie to mark for cutting. I do all of this by eyeball but it usually turns out usable.
For tricky unions, you can buy an eBay tube expander to overlap one side then tack in place.
But also as mentioned...doing it a bunch helps. Jump in man!
I use a mixture of blemished discount mandrel bends and pie cuts. I was making the cuts on an abrasive saw, but went to a horizontal band saw from Harbor Freight.
It helps to lay out all of the available bends that you have, then see what will work for the situation. I use masking tape to attach the pieces temporarily. You can also join straight sections with a band clamp that has holes drilled it in for tacking.
Definitely some good ideas in here and I've learned a thing or two myself with some of the other ideas thrown out there. Using a zip tie or masking tape to make straight sharpie lines seems to be a no brainer, yet it hadn't occured to me. I was just eyeballing that too
My solution is pretty low tech, use a 5" grinder with 1mm blade for all cuts, and square up cuts with the same (grinding versus cutting wheel). Also use a grinder to bevel the pipe ends for welding. The zip tie trick works well to get things square across the radius and another tip for assembly is to find some stiff rubber tubing that fits snug inside the primary tubes (ie OD=ID of primary) .That way you can fit up multiple sections together without needing tape, and you know the inside of the pipes is flush (where it matters). PET tape also good stuff.
I've only done a few turbo manifolds but by far the biggest thing is to go slow and have the patience to do a good job of fit up, is painstaking but remaking ill fitting pipes sucks more
It's awesome. A place I worked at switched to outsourcing all their aerospace coatings so I took home what I thought would last a lifetime. I use it for everything. It holds well over 400F and when it does fail it doesn't leave much residue. I could have literally filled my truck bed with it, but I only took a box. Using the last of it currently
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?s for the Turbo Fab guys. 
