home made sheet metal intake

[sparky1987]

Yeah right on I can weld cast aluminum no problem I do it from time to time at work its not hard.hardest ______

 

[turboglenn]

What rod you using on cast sparky? i'm always listening/reading/learning soi'm only asking in the sake of interest not trying to dog yourwork cause we've all seen you do some damn fine welding. Above i wasn't trying to imply anyone couldn't weld cast or that there's anythign wrong with a persons choice in filler, just never heard of 80xx beffore honestly.

I went aluminum crazy when i got the inverter TIG setup, then i think i burned myself out on it (i still enjoy it) but I really love the times i'm now working with 4130, 4140 and most Types of SS ..i think i like the challenge of keepingthe heat low while penetrating and still getting a nice weld. Also i love seeing how little filler i can use and still get a nice clean full depth and full stregnth weld.. I remember years and years back seeing teeny tiny little beads on high end bicycles and thinking the weld was week (i was a young teenager then) And today i know that the bead doesn'thave to be any bigger than the thickness of the material wall before it's strength is not in question but rather the material at that point

 

[DSM_love_GST]

What about something like a ramhorn manifold with new flanges to be able to mount to the head, and accept a tb directly on top?

 

[sparky1987]

I use mostly 4043. Its what the shop I work for supplies us with and sorry about the random words in my last post damn auto spell feature on my phone went ape for a minute. I weld most the stuff at work at 200 amps with 1/8" filler wire and 1/8 tungsten. So im burning it in pretty good. As far as weld width my teacher always said twice the size of your filler material if you're doing stick or tig is a good rule of thumb he said. Mig obviously is a different story. I weld alot of stainless at work too its all .035 thickness ill have to post up a picture of that for giggles. Its fun welding stainless trying to keep it that gold color.

 

[DSM_love_GST]

no, Im saying. It would be an idea!

 

[H@xtGSX]

Good catch. I was working on a design for a piece of stainless this afternoon and had just finished doing a bill of materials for it, which included 80xx series. Yea, 40xx for cast AL. Normally, I just gas weld it and melt a deep pool, then push it along the seam. Works well, but takes eons longer than sticking it and takes a lot of attention and finesse to not blow out a hole through it.

A ramhorn from top down is basically how I was handling the problem of keeping equal runner length. The only spot to tuck it into is the area under the stock intake. That is why my rough conceptual looks like it does.

3/8" is chunky, for sure. I do not have that much in AL drops or scrap to melt down right now. I'd have to make a bigger crucible with some SS pipe also. What I have made now would not melt down enough to do a pour at 3/8". I'm sure I could scrounge up the AL and put a piece of 6" Schedule 80 and a 1/2" plate together for a crucible though. I would prefer to weld mandrels though, just for concentricity.

 

[turboglenn]

talk about scrounging aluminum i got your back@! I throw away a shop vac full of vaumed shavings from the mill and lathe at least once a week, and i keep all scraps and such for maing mount tabs and things like that.. how much "swell" (increase in volume taken up) do we gain by going cast sense the material looses density from going from a forging to a casting we must gain what we lose in the density by gaining volume???

but i have a lot of scraps and maybe could donate some raw material that's good but the price of aluminum since the G.W. Bush war started hs risen dramitcally every year since, so it hurts to send it off, but since its for a good purpose i might not cringe as much


the last part about a crucibal is that for the casting part or are you talking about just fabbing the parts from raw instead of casting (sorry i retained nothing from the TINY bit of sand cast we did in high school metal shop, other than that i'm a taught on the job and by reading and practice machinist and weldor

 

[2gmummy]

You'll have to excuse the horribleness haha but hopefully the general idea is the and im no physics major so this might no even work but the red is a shorter runner path and the black is a bit curvier to minimze tight corners and both should fit around the starter. I might be total shit haha but my .02

Also i might have missed this but why are you doing 1-2-4 runners, wouldn't it be easier to just use four runners?

DSM_LOVE sry to butcher your pic haha

 

[DSM_love_GST]

The idea behind 1-2-4 runners I believe, was to eliminate the plenum. It would seem that a plenumless intake would have a more smooth path. Instead of fighting to get to the last runner.
*edit* I don't mind the picture chop. If it helps us get where we need to be, I am all for the chopping!

 

[turboglenn]

hey, all thoughts and knowledge are welcome IMO, feel free to add usefull content or ideas.

As for the 1 to 2 to 4 path vs. 1 to4 path .. I think it's going down like this, one of us will build the one in the pic (i think sparky's on that) i plan to build one that's sideways like the engine and utilizes only a 4 into1 runner to plenum setup like you mention

the 4into2 into 1 has proven superior on flowing the opposite of what we're doing (used on motorcycle and high eprformance 4 cylinder headers for n/t apps) And the 4 into 1 is simpler with a peakier type of flow but then again we're basically taking exhaust style builds and turning them backwards theworld could turn inside out and all properties known about these types of construction could go backwards as well...that's why we're doing this.. to figure it out, to play with ideas and have fun too

 

[sparky1987]

That's what im the most interested in. Doing something that's not out there im down to experiment. You never know what you're going to find out or what ideas you may get along the way.

 

[H@xtGSX]

Glenn, it wouldn't be cost effective to ship that much aluminum. There's more than enough you cam get for free if you look in the right places. I am a junkyard ninja when it comes to getting raw materials. The pipe and plate I mentioned would serve as a larger crucible in order to melt down a larger quantity of aluminum at once, since something like this would have to be done as 1 pour per side. A piece of 6 or 8 inch shedule 80 steel pipe made into a big cup with the 1/2" plate serving as the bottom. Since steel melts at nearly double the temp as aluminum, it makes a quick and effective backyard crucible. The bulk up you mention would be fairly significant vs. pressed mandrel, but I think an estimate of maybe a 3x wall thickness increase would leave enough meat for it to be as it would need to be. The casting imperfections would be the main concern I would have, since the containment of 25 psi could potentially turn it into a low grade pipe bomb under the hood if it were to fail catastrophically.

I think having Sparky weld up a mandrel piece would be the most efficient and good looking way. Production wise though, casting is simple and fast. Even if you had a welding jig for it already made, it could be poured faster. It definently wouldn't be nearly as pretty though.

The reference to the motorcycle header for the 1-2-4 configuation is exactly right. It is a proven design known to be a massive horsepower maker. The main reason for that is the lesser amount of disruption of high velocity laminar flow allowing greater volumes to be moved in a given time.

 

[sparky1987]

Just bored at work so I welded up a quick ss piece. I need help I swear that's all I want to do any more is weld I do it at home and at work. Ill start looking for inexpensive bends and what not to attempt this project. Ill poke at it hear and there till its done and see what you guys think once I get started ill post another thread and post tons of pictures.

 

[talonalex92]

If you would be interested in throwing a 7 bolt flange on that, im in. No questions.

 

[turboglenn]

Just bored at work so I welded up a quick ss piece. I need help I swear that's all I want to do any more is weld I do it at home and at work. Ill start looking for inexpensive bends and what not to attempt this project. Ill poke at it hear and there till its done and see what you guys think once I get started ill post another thread and post tons of pictures.

haha, i know how ya feel, there was a time when i first got my own tig (had worked off other people's for years) that i didn't stop welding day in and day out, going through a Q sized argone bottle daily (that's about 4-5 hours ARC time alone, not counting off time, jigging etc.. this was at the start of the doctors forcing me out of working because of my injuries worsening)

i spent more money welding "nothing" in those few months than i've spent on materials welding for a livingin the last 2 years

If you would be interested in throwing a 7 bolt flange on that, im in. No questions.

If you're talking baout the box in his pic above your post that's only about a inch and a half long, maybe 1/2" box sextional. If you're talking about his manifolds in general, well i wouldn't ask a question either if i was getting one


The stopper screw for the runner flaps made me have to set the box back a bit to sit flush but it could be removed or replaced with an allen set screw (you can get them in long lengths and enough to do the job andbe out of the way i'm sure)
NOt trying to change the route but i was in the garage/shop messin with cleaning up my cyclone manifold i got to play with eventially on my car and got an idea. This would be a super easy short runner manifold build for ballers on a budget, but not sure how it would perform.. i would like to play with it and test it though

This is the plenum i made for my SMIM i never finished years ago when all of them were box shaped and think i might machine the bottom to bolt to this and maybe see about fabbing some tapered velocity stacks to go inside it.. just figuring out seacuring it while being removable and not having a leaking structure would require some engineering but wouldn't be too hard to do.

and if i start to use my milled flange on a tubular build i'll have no need for this outdated plenum so why not cut/modify it to bolt to this runner setup.. i could even still use the dual runner setup to maybe still increase torque just a tad since this clearly would be an all top end manifold f put together

EDIT: NEVERMIND THIS IDEA i didn't realize at first that the curve from the head on that part of the cylone manifold curves down and NOT up blows that idea I was so happy about all to hell

 

[H@xtGSX]

I wouldn't say there's a direction to this. Improvement in general is the objective, in whatever form that may take. Let's not hinder ourselves by saying it has to conform to anything. If you can fabricate it, lets give it a shot. Worst case scenario is we learn more about how the engine responds to various aspects of intake design, ESPECIALLY if it is outside of the engineering norms applied in what we have available already. Slap that sucker together, JB Weld the gaps, and fire it up! If it seems to have a benefit, then go back and do the heavier machining and detail work. Minimizes your commitment if the initial test shows it to be flawed. That way we all benefit and can tweak what we have if you find something more effective out from it.

EDIT: GLENN you could still feed that square box from above and have a pipe from the throttle body feed into the middle of the box, instead of the end, thus somewhat mitigating the preferential treatment of #4 piston. It facing down could actually be an advantage.

I was thinking... since we are also talking cast intakes, the constraint of commercially available mandrel is no longer an issue. I could model it out in foam blocks and sculpt the runners to fit, even make a cutter the shape of the port entering the head to really smooth out the transitions. Glenn, do you have a template for the flange? I could cast to a pre milled flange and weld it on and prevent myself from having to mill the face of the casting flat.

Sparky, how did you go about shaping the bell mouths on the end of your runners? Did you do a flat plate layout and roll it? Or make a mandrel shaped like the head ports and press it through to form it?

 

[sparky1987]

On mine I used a die we have here at work to make the bell mouths and I tried to form the runners the best I could to the port size if you need a template of the flange I could get the drawing from my buddy to send you its all drawn up in a cad type program not sure what he used.

 

[H@xtGSX]

If it is an accurate drawing for the flange, that would be very helpful. That conceptual drawing I did was off rough measurements only. A flange detail with dimensions that i could get centerline positions from would make it easier to be accurate with my work ups. If it isn't larger than 4MB, you can send it to my phone and I can DL it to my computer. I'll send you my email via PM.

 

[turboglenn]

I machined the flang the old fashion way for mine, took half inch plate, dye-kem'ed it red, traced a new exhaust manifold gasket, plasma cut the 1/2 plate to a rectangle around it and then actually took the time to follow every contour of the flange instead of drilling just the holes, spun up an end mill and went. I'll post a pic it could maybe be used to make a mold for casting flanges in flat to give a couple extra "blanks" to start from

 

[H@xtGSX]

I don't know if I would trust a cast aluminum flange, personally. A cast steel flange I'd be ok with, but cast aluminum is too easily warped/cracked/sheared for me to comfortably give it to someone else for use. I can see someone clamping down a repair stud from Autozone too hard and cracking it with their handy dandy 18" flex needle torque wrench. Forged aluminum milled to shape would hold up better and be more forgiving to over torque, and more resistant to tempature related shape changes.

Before sparky offered the flange drawing, I was going to do it old school and blue dye it to a piece of 1/4" AR 500 I have from another project.

 

[turboglenn]

i just figured cheap like how some people cut flanges off stock intakes for their home made SMIM builds.. cast it and machine both sides with a surfacing bit (i could do this free at home except casting i don't do at all)

I wasn't able to find intake flanges in aluminum as cheap as you can get steel or even stainless exhasut flanges, the ones i did find were around 130 bucks, which is still about the lowest i could do them for if some one asked me to buy some (i offered 70 once but it was too high and to be honest with the time i put in I'm glad the order didn't get placed, i just quoted dirt cheap because i was dead broke and needed to pay bills..

I didn't thionk about the torque aspect of the castings holding up as i've never done it to see what can be produced at home as far as rigidity. I figured foolishly i guess that you would have a result similar to stock intake manifold material was except without as good of strength, but didn't figure it would be that bad that you couldn't mar into it with a bolt head without it seperating once it was milled on both sies espoecially

 

[H@xtGSX]

Even the highest quality cast aluminum is, for our purposes, a fragile thing. Poor quality slag filled pot scrape aluminum, like they use to make Chinese knock off compressor housings, is even worse. You can bent or rip apart that crap by hand. I have to use a quality of scrounged aluminum between those 2 examples. I beef up my own castings by about double of what I think a part will need, because I'd rather cut away material and be a bit thick than a hair too thin... Because I cannot really say what quality my castings are.

Aluminum is AWESOME for DIY people working in their shops with what they have or can scavenge, because we can melt it and cast it with cheap and available supplies. Honestly, if I could get some of those furnace electrodes, I could melt steel, to the dismay of my neighbors. It would just MURDER my power bill.

 

[sparky1987]

Well I can honestly say that my flanges are cut from a piece of 5/8 thick 6061t6 aluminum and its plenty thick so id say its safe to go that thick with a casting. The biggest help with welding something that thick is to heat it up right before you weld it so that the oils and dirt and any impurities from the casting can be cooked out.

 

[H@xtGSX]

6061 is pressed or rolled, higher density material than a raw cast. That is basically billet aluminum. I make equipment gaurds from 6061. It is much higher strength than a cast piece of lower quality mixed aluminum of unknown content ratio.

 

[sparky1987]

Very true on the cast material. Either way baking it helps cook out some of the impureities before welding.