Sunday, May 8, 2016

Exhaust Lift - Getting There

I obtained another 2.5" flange - note that it's important if you're ever going to buy one of these, especially a 2.5", to make sure you measure the bolt center hole. In this case (and I already had, as my mid pipe has both sizes on it!) the size I needed was 105mm.



I cut off the old bent flange and welded on the new one with the pipe supported in the position I wanted as above.




Because the pipe ended up at a bit of an angle from it's original location I had a little gap to fill; thankfully the flange is nice and thick so it was as simple as building a bit of a puddle on the flange then quickly dragging it onto the pipe then stopping before it burnt through.


Mounted up, you can see I've put the bolt holes in a position that should make them a little more accessible once I've built a new floor above them.



Here you can see the original height (left) and the new height (right)


I had to get the car higher to give me enough room to bring the main part of the exhaust over the diff cradle.


I then cut off the last two bends and the flex join, then cut the flange off the flex join to re-use.


Here I've bolted the flange back to the mid pipe, so it can't move, then turned the flex join/bent section backwards, and then rotated it until it's at a suitable angle. I then tacked it in place on the car.


This is a much nicer looking angle. I'll need a small offcut to fit between the end of the flex join and the hotdog.



Removed and welded off-the-car. I had to weld on the inside of the flange where the inner part of the curve is so as to clear the head of the bolt I will use to mount it.

I didn't do any more as it was midnight and probably pushing it to keep using the grinder after then.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Exhaust Lift - Definitely going to need a flange!



When I first went out to the shed this morning I was dismayed to find it was rather wet; however I removed the mid section to start modifying it to fit and then discovered just how not-flat the flange on it was. No welding today - I most definitely need to lop this off and weld a whole new flange on instead of trying to re-angle this one!!



Exhaust Lift - Extractors




So the first step to lifting the exhaust is to unbolt and remove the extractors, then to cut slots in them so they can be bent into shape. In the photo above that's what I've done, then re-bolted them to the motor and bent them up using a trolley jack underneath.



Welded back up the slots - it looks pretty bad as I was welding up some fairly wide holes rather than cutting out and replacing sections with perfect fitting bends. Maybe in the future I'll build a proper system using mandrel bends, but for now this will have to do the job.



Had a few spots on the extractors that had clearly been leaking so I ground them back with a flaps wheel and re-welded about four or five spots in total.





It's a lot easier to re-weld over some existing steel than to fill the holes created by cutting slots and bending the pipe!!


This shot is taken from underneath the car with the camera level to the sill - ignore the center pipe as I've got to remove and modify it next, but this is looking from the sill to the brace that runs level with the sill and the extractors are in the car in this shot - as you can see they are not visibly overhanging the "bottom" of the car.


A shot from the top showing the new angle of the flange, I will need to modify the mid pipe flange angle to match along with the other work required to lift the far end of that pipe up.

Ideally I need a whole new flange but I'm not sure I have one here, as the current one is bent. I'll make sure I have a good look before persisting otherwise I'll make do with what I have so I can get the floor done, and remove/re-weld once the car is in the new shed at the new house and I've got room and light to work with.