well i just want to know how long does it take to tig weld a manifold that resembles ss autochrome?

 

bump ...i also want to know how many hr's it take to weld a 10pt roll cage.....considering you have 20 years of experience making drag car ect..estimate price on labor to weld a 10pt cage that has been fitted to the car already??

 

took me about 30 hrs to weld a 10pt cage into a 94 civic, car was gutted already when i started.

***** if you had all the materials of the manifold sitting in front of you and everything fit perfect it would only take a few hrs to weld the manifold. if you had to fabricate it from scratch, it would take more. *****




Modified by lohatch at 11:13 AM 1/24/2005

 

back to my question please

 

Sounds like you got a quote form a welder and couldnt believe how much he wanted to weld up a mani for ya.. but, it depends on the manifold and how many joints we are talking about. for example, is it a turbo manifold, if so is it a log style or ramhorn style, is it a manifold for a NA car? even after you give this necessary info it would still be impossible for any one on HT to accurately tell you the amount of hours to do it. lastly, bear in mide that tig is the slowest of all welding processes, which inhearently would cause a price jump.

 

i understand it is slow i got a quote for 50 bucks an hours they are very reputable, but i just dont want them to bs

 

are you looking to have them weld you a copy of the SSautochrome manifold or a ramhorn style manifold, or a log style?? the cost will also depend on what materials you plan to use, what collector is being used,etc. it might be better to just purchase a manifold from someone on here. i would hate to see you go to someone and pay $50/hr and later find out that the person doesnt have very much experience in manifolds.

i bought an SSautochrome and ran it on a sohc kit i peiced together. i figured the $150 was worth it considering the time/materials i would have invested. i really didnt care if it cracked because i would have just rewelded it. i didnt have to worry about wastegate positioning/boost spike because i had an internally wastegated IHI RHB5. the point of the kit was to just have a little fun, i wanted a long runner style manifold and didnt want to spend more than the motor was worth. i ran it for 3 months and never had a problem with it. i had to fab up an adapter plate for the RHB5.

 

i can a ramhorn style in ~10hrs, id image an ssautochrome style would be teh same 10-12 hours...

 

I'd say average is probably about 8-10 hrs. However, a lot of it depends on how well it's fit up, and the sequence that the welds are made in. If a guy was given the whole thing as one piece and couldn't take it apart to weld the individual runners, it would take quite a while longer.

I'd say if I were given all the runners tacked up and fit nicely, I could weld them all up in about 2.5hrs.

 

That's about right .To weld 4 tubes and weld on a collector.Then weld the ports inside and out.Takes about 2 to 2 1/2 hours.But it takes the other 6 hours to cut and fit everything,And make a collector and roll a megaphone.That is an 8 hour (hauling ***)job.Now a custom header takes anywhere from 1 day to 3 days depending on the car .And how much **** you have to take off first.

 

about as long as it took you to type out all the periods.

 

agreed...for the experienced hand, the welding is the easy part, and the most predictable thing to estimate, timewise.