Mild, stainless or ally?
Turbo Mini Forums

I am currently working out how I can get my intercooler setup like the bloke that made his piping out of motorbike exhaust. His set up is very neat and I think it is the best setup for the rst s2 intercooler.

Now the thing is I was going to just follow the same path for the pipes but use straight metal and silicon bends. Now it would work out about ?90 just for the silicon hoses. I'm not tight but begrudge spending 1.5 times the cost of an hour on the rolling road on rubber hose. I also cant seem to find anyone with a big enough pipe bender.

This has left me with the option of welding in the corners. I can weld mild steel with my MIG welder, Ive done that not too hard. I can buy gas and wire to weld ally or stainless but I have'nt welded them before.

I have located some mild steel for nowt and quote for ally isnt all that expensive but for stainless your getting back to the realms of the cost of rolling road (?55ish).

How would you deal with the inside surface of mild steel tubing?
Is it that hard to weld ally?
Any better ideas?

try your local custom chav exhaust place.

i had my intercooler pipes bent up out of 2" stainless, took about half an hour and cost me £20....well worth it!

You can't weld ally with a MIG welder, and yes it is BLOODY difficult even with the correct type of welder (a TIG), as it is so easy to melt the ally and make holes out of it.
The way to do it is to get hold of some swept mandrel bent curves, and some straight pipe. Then mock it all up and adjust to it, tack it up and then either weld it yourself if you are confident enough with the welder, or get a fab shop to do it for you.
As Bud says, these places that will make an exhaust up to fit any car are a good source of the bent pipes. The kind of pipe benders available from machine mart aren't much use as they kink/fold the pipe rather than bend it.

You CAN weld ally with a mig welder and that’s why Machine Mart sell the Gas and Wire to do it. BUT it don't work that great unless you've had lots of experience at it.
And Tom is right it would be much better to use a TIG to do the job properly.
As for the intercooler pipes I would look at buying preformed bends and cut and shut those to fit.
Do a search for Graham Harvey he did this and the results speak for themselves.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.

I have welded ally with a MIG in the past, it wasn't great, but got my out of the shit when the TIG was shagged

Team Racing

What I do to weld aluminium is take it to the welder at work, and sling him the price of a drink.

I get perfect results, everytime!

Edited by Andymini on 12th Jun, 2005.

OK I'll rephrase, you can theoretically weld ally with a MIG, but anything that is going to be thin enough for intercooler piping is going to be bloody difficult to get airtight, you'll need to be a bloody genius with a MIG.......

tom, your right it did look shit

Team Racing

Crap idea !!!

Is plastic pipe any good ?? the plumbing stuff that glues together

Metro turbo weekend driver,Mini turbo in the making again!