Has anyone tried this ? I don't think it would have a melting problem but I wonder if it would disapate heat too fast slowing the gases down.

Again , Please just the people that have experiance with this.

Thanks,,,

 

I think Geoff from full-race has an aluminum exhuaust on his civic.

 

Some people have talked about trying it.........

I would be really interested to see the results of course it would save weight, but i think there would be too many failures. On the other hand people have talked about usng some special coatings to prevent failures maybe i will try it on my RR car

 

From a Mech E. background....


The idea would work fine from the cat-back, for racing purposes at least. Using an aluminum exhaust on the street is a bad idea, though. Aluminum has no fatigue limit, so it will crack, eventually, no matter how perfect the welds or how well it was supported.

If an aluminum exhaust lasted 9 months in a daily driven car I would be surprised.

 

It's probably not all that realistic anyway. The muffler makes up a good portion of the weight and finding an aluminum muffler might be hard. Normal mufflers will have corrosion issue where the aluminum tube will mount to it. If you are running in a class that doesn't require a muffler, the class probably doesn't require an exhaust at all. Although, you could find some perforated aluminum tube and build your own muffler. I did it with stainless steel and motorcycle muffler packing.

Either way, like Beepy said aluminum sucks in fatigue resistance, especially at elevated temperatures.

 

Thanks for the replys.
I am interested in a street application, I just wonder about long term use.
The piping is very heavey in 3" stainless , I would say it would save 20lbs or more.
I might try it anyway, I'll keep you updated .

 

You can always try thin gage 321 stainless .035 quite expensive but it is made in 3" diameter

 

driving every day on it, no problems yet. Im a mechanical engineer also, and i feel that this is an acceptable exhaust for a properly built street race car. no problems yet. saves about 35 lbs for a 4"

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Full-Race Geoff &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">driving every day on it, no problems yet. Im a mechanical engineer also, and i feel that this is an acceptable exhaust for a properly built street race car. no problems yet. saves about 35 lbs for a 4"</TD></TR></TABLE>

yea Geoff i ment to ask you some questions about that exhuast.. i'll try to get a hold of you at the shop, but you car is just plain raw

 

Wow, thats a pretty novel idea and someone is actually doing it. Keep this thread going.

 

Shouldn't be a problem at all we have been planning to do it to a few cars at the shop.

 

whats wrong with titanium?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by nullassault &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">whats wrong with titanium?</TD></TR></TABLE>

It's expensive as hell. The guys from GSC run a full 4" aluminum exhaust on their drag car... I was thinking about doing the same on my new EK drag car.

 

I'm running one on the gt42 GVR4 and am about to put a 3" through daily driver paces on my turbo Colt including an aluminum muffler I made. I will post pictures when it's done.

 

I would be interested to see how the resonance of an aluminum muffler compares to a similar steel muffler.