may help to give lads more input ,id love to see a vid of welding even one pice of tubing on a manifold welds look great cant get mine anywere like them
http://www.ziptied.com/forums/index.php?topic=34888.0

 

yeah its alway fun to watch step by step builds for sure.

even the most experienced fabsters can often see or learn new tricks some other person uses or tried.

 

Not really about some of his methods. My process is a bit different. You can see he's getting a lot of movement welding his runners off a jig in the pics when he reattaches them. He has newly formed big gaps at the collector.

I personally do complete mockup of runners, then remove 2 of the 4. I then weld the remaining two while tacked between the head flange and collector...let those cool, remove (don't weld to head flange or collector), then tack in the other two and do those. I then will either just weld the second two completely, or assemble in an order that works best to get the best access to the collector welds.

 

That's good advise

 

Same for me, I try to avoid welding complete runners off the assembly because of the movement that occurs. However, the better your assembly is, the less movement there is.

As of lately, it works best for me when I assemble the entire manifold on my jig, then break off two runners, weld the two remaining (attached) runners on the jig, then weld one of the loose ones on a vise, making sure to put it back on the manifold while it is still hot. I've noticed that if you leave a welded runner to cool, it will usually be shorter and won't fit in the assembly at all. The last 10 manifolds I have made were done this way with good results. I barely build them nowadays so I'm not getting nearly as much practice as I once was. As a matter of fact, I have a manifold on my bench right now that I have to weld up. I have done many of these, and I'm staring at it trying to remember how I used to weld this one. Lesson: Take notes of all your builds.

 

Good advice right there.