i recently finished piping up my first manifold, it is only tacked together for fit up. i still need to figure out where i am going to place both my gates. i left lots of room down low between the first and second runners for this reason. my old setup was a top mounted t3 turbo and it was such a pain in the *** doing regular work on the car and way too tight for the downpipe with the steering shaft, now with a much larger divided t4 i figured best bet was to move it out.

anyways any tips/criticism/whatever is more then welcome since this is the first time i have done this and have lots to learn.













p.s. i know the manifold is nowhere even remotely close to equal length, i think i was already in over my head attempting a split pulse t4 as a first manifold, last thing i needed to worry about was trying to make the runners equal.


Modified by robbbby at 4:39 PM 1/27/2008

 

Well, I think you know how well you did. That's a pretty complex mani to make on your first try. Overall it's not bad, but there's alot I'm sure you can see that the pics don't show.

Only things I see are, for one the runners are overly complicated. You didn't seem to do much planning, you just started routing. Also, I see some pretty big misaligned runners...some at the collector, and some in the runners. Gaps are gonna get you, as well the difficulty in welding it. This is where jigs really help.

Good luck man...if you can at least get it welded descent then considering you built it yourself, you've saved yourself some good cash. You live and learn man. Your first manifolds is where you'll learn alot, so don't be surprised if you have alot of things you'd do better later.

 

NOt bad for a first. its going to take SOOO long to seam it all up

 

thanks for the feedback. there are a couple joints that have a gap, none are large enough to fit a 1/16 filler rod through though, so i hope i don't have too much trouble welding it, i'm just going to take it slow and pray i don't burn through. my biggest problem was cutting the weld els into connecting pie cuts, i need a better/more exact method to do that.


and i know exactly what you are saying about the runners being complicated, i didn't want them to be so crazy but i had to keep everything as tight to the head as possible because of my downpipe, and everything also had to kind of 180 out of the collector and then clear my motor mount. if i had to do it again i'd definately do things a little different.

now only if i can weld it up as nice as you

 

I like it. I see a few misaligned runners, but you can easily just cut the tacks and realign them, no big deal. It's just so massive, it'll put a lot of heat into the engine compartment. I would have tried to make it more compact/simple, not saying I would have succeeded, lol, but I would have tried. As far as filling gaps, I just filled in a hole over a 1/4" wide, so any gaps you have on your manifold won't be any problem at all.

 

i just put the pictures on photobucket, the pictures are too small on flickr. you can see it alot better now so hopefully that means more suggestions/tips/recommendations. i already think i'm going to redo half of the first runner and bring it closer to the head and just use the 90 right off the head flange rather than a small piece of straight.

 

have fun welding that up roberto! holy crap. there are a couple spots that it looks like you could have twisted a couple of the elbows to eliminate the need for another inbetween and could have put a piece of straight pipe in there, but otherwise it looks pretty good. i hope you make a big brace for your turbo!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by weiRtech &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> there are a couple spots that it looks like you could have twisted a couple of the elbows to eliminate the need for another inbetween and could have put a piece of straight pipe in there, </TD></TR></TABLE>

i still have lots of pipe and elbows left, i'm going to look at it again and see if i can eliminate some bends. any runner in particular that catches your eye that could be straightened out.

i think no.2 going up to the head flange needs to be straightened. i put a couple bends to give it some length since it is very, very short compared to the others.

 

Looks pritty good all I would do is like stated above in some spots move the bends around some to get rid of the extra welds and save your self some time on welding , one tip I can give you is to weld say runners 1 and 4 first and then test fit 2 and 3 to see how much it movved do to the long runner length. The runners look pritty close to being all = in length nice job what BW turbo is that btw ?

 

It's kind of hard to tell you exactly what to simplify. The only thing I can say is that there is just simply too much bend left and right and left and right. There are areas I see where there could've been long straight sections, but it'll require change to more than one runner.

At this point it may be to your benefit just to start welding and get it finished. You have a TON of weld time on that, and while it's done you might just go ahead and hit the home stretch. Taking it apart and changing runners may get you even deeper timewise and lead to more frustration.

I think you should weld it up, then if you want to build another in the future with some simpler runners you should do that then.

 

Not sure if it's an optical illusion or not... but is the turbo angled down in the front? If so, I don't think that's good for lubrication or bearings.

 

clean your garage man!!!!

 

when its all done and braced up, it'll look great. I like it.

Just take the tips everyone is giving you and apply them on your next, if their is a next.

 

240's suck without power steering . im gonna be making something like that for my sr corolla soon enough hopefully. t4 twinscroll ftw! what are you hp goals? and what mods you got to the motor/head?


Marcus

 

thanks for all the feedback guys, i think i'm going to take rc000e's advice and just weld it up rather than getting frustrated, only thing i am going to do though is redo half the first runner to keep it tighter to the head, right now it looks like it will be tight to the downpipe. i have also have lots of leftovers so maybe i'll try a simpler manifold just for fun.

and to answer questions.

-turbo is a s366
-the garage is actually very clean, there is just a bunch of crap under that bench
-the turbo may be pointing down very little, maybe a degrees or two, i don't think it's as bad as the picture illustrates, the pictures are crappy, they don't really have much perspective or depth. i don't think it will be a problem. hopefully.
-no powersteering is great, it's not just looped, i also have the rack vented so i'm not fighting hydraulics, works good.

 

i think it looks very good for your first mani. are you going to tackle the downpipe before you weld up the mani ?

better than some ive seen posted on here.

 

i'm going to wait on the downpipe, things will probably shift a little after welding so i'll just hold off. i'll post pics soon hopefully of it welded, although it will probably look like crap.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by robbbby &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
and to answer questions.

-turbo is a s366
.</TD></TR></TABLE>

same thing ive been thinking about for my corolla, that or s362. you using a stock tranny or mazworx adapters for z32/z33 tranny? good luck with everythig looks like it'll be fun


Marcus

 

they also make a s364 if you want something in between. i'm going to make my own adapter plate and use a z32 transmission, hopefully it works out.

 

a just took some scrap pieces of the pipe to get a feel for how it welds and am having problems i think.

when doing just a fusion pass the weld looks fine, leaves nice colour and has proper penetration. as soon as i add filler all the colour is gone. with the filler it leaves a nice tight even haz outside of the weld, but the actual weld has no colour, it is just gray, but not the dull crow feet looking gray you get from over heating. is this normal, could gas flow or gas lens be the problem. filler is 308.

 

not bad for your first try

 

Dammit, pics arent working for me.

 

God damn, you could have used a lot less piping if you used a jig and spent some time thinking about routing the runners. What car/engine is that?

 

if my collector didn't sit so low and i didn't have to loop around and over the engine mount and stick tight to the head i'm sure i could have shortened it and used more straight pieces.

i guess the only thing i am seeing is right after looping 180 out of the collector i could have put a small angle and ran a straight piece right to a 90/45/30 or whatever going into the head, but then i would probably have had issues with the runners interfereing with the downpipe.

ah well, live and learn, i'm not a manifold builder so i really had no clue what i was doing, i did have a fun time building it though. maybe my next one will be better and i won't place the turbo in such a tough spot, i should have just pointed the turbine outlet to the side of the car and just done a pipe out the side, manifold would have been alot simpler that way. i still have spare flanges and pipe so maybe when i get bored i'll redo it.

 

i think it is great for the first one you did. congratson taking up the project yourself

thats a monster turbo for an sr20 my man. i have the same one on a 1.9L gsr and i am revving mine to just about 10K. my bud with an sr20 seems to have problems with his .82ar GT35R falling out of boost in the shift but you may have some better luck.