Hi Guys / Ladies,

I know that this has been discussed in the past but....I will reopen it.

Please advise if stainless is as good as aluminium.

I had aluminium pipes on my old car but they had the biggest problem of em' all.....when I tightened the T bolt clamps the alu pipe was crushed......

I saw Agtronic works and some of them are stainless (intercooler piping)

Please feel free to discuss!

 

What thickness aluminum are you crushing?

You shouldnt have any issues with aluminum crushing even at crazy high boost.



They both will carry air and both get hot being the nature of their environment. both will pop off the same with the same bead but the stainless you will be able to tighten on more than the aluminum.

 

I don't know why anyone would go with stainless for IC pipes. Aluminum is quite a bit lighter then stainless.

Get some better/thicker material and you wont have a problem crushing it.

 

Beyond weight savings the real reason to use aluminum is that its by far superior in thermal properties.

I would never use anything but aluminum.

 

1) Stainless / steel is heavy
2) its expensive
3) depending on how your aluminum piping runs the air will hit it and cool to an extent, not with steels
4) easier to weld
5) easier to cut, thus prolonging the life of your consumables
6) because racecar

 

I would go aluminum. Price is the biggest factor.
I also have crushed cheap pipes on aluminum.
You can always use or make something like a vibrant boost brace if needed.

 

#6 says it all lol.

 

Thanks Guys.

I am asking this because I saw Agtronic and also Unobtainium using stainless for IC piping.

Anyway.....in my country ALU is 2 times the price of stainless)))))))))))))

 

If you use stainless you MUST backpurge it for IC pipes.

AL is all around better for IC pipes, but in the end a polished stainless set of IC pipes with nice welds will look and hold up far better than the aluminum ones.

 

here, aluminium is too expensive to get, ive fabricate many ss ic piping but i'd prefer aluminium piping for sure..anyway there isnt too much different on air temperature..

 

why not just use vbands on the aluminum tubing

 

For those saying AL is better for temps are wrong. AL heatsoaks worse, it conducts heat into the intake faster than steel. Generally engine bays are hot and you don't want that heat in your intake. If your engine bay is somehow ambient temp then AL would be better temp wise. It's not hard to over come the problem with some kind of insulation or good routing of pipe, and you might not be able to tell the difference but it's still something to think about.

 

AL does not heat soak "worse" then stainless steel. If you leave an aluminum pipe and a steel pipe in a 150* oven they will BOTH reach 150*. The aluminum will just reach it faster than the steel.

Thing is, you take the 150* AL out of the oven it will be cooler faster than the steel.

What I'm saying is that in a hot environment within just a few minutes both types of metals will be the same temperature. However, since while you're driving you have constant fresh air flow into the engine bay, the AL will stand a much better chance at cooling down then the steel.

 

I used the term heatsoak incorrectly in my last post, should be soaks heat worse, it was late

In your example SovXietday you need to add pressurized air flow through the pipe. And you are right that AL will cool faster, but it also heats up faster. The problem is (and key word here) transference of heat is greater than aluminum. Al is going to suck the engine bay heat up an let it go in the intake charge faster than steel. The air in the AL intake pipe is going to take more heat out of the pipe than the air that might be circulating in the bay,just because there is more of it at a lower temp. Trouble is in most cases (even while moving) the engine bay is hotter than the air outside the car, so there is no cooling effect (unless the IC isn't working well).

Steel on the other hand takes the engine bay heat in and out less. It does stay hotter longer but it has less heat transfer to the intake charge. How much of a difference this might make depends on the turbo system design. In application this might mean detonation to a motor running hot or right on the limits of motors tuning. It also might mean nothing to well designed system maybe with insulation on the charge pipes and good routing.

 

both are going to get hot.
doesnt matter what it is made of. differences your talking about are negligible.

 

biggest factors here are price and weight. aluminum bends are both cheaper and lighter than that of stainless. with aluminum you can easily, cut, prep, and weld. with stainless, you have to cut, prep, backpurge, then weld. with aluminum, your tooling takes little to no effort to make the cuts to get what is desired. with stainless, it takes a toll on your tooling over time

so, not only are the stainless pipes more expensive, but they can also cost you even more in the end on purge gas and tooling if you start to dull or break anything in the fab process

 

Am I the only one who bought a bunch of mild steel bends, painted them, and hauled ***?

 

Yes probably. You want to do it on the dirt cheap, go buy some fence post and use that

 

Once painted, who knows what it's made out of. Mild is actually 2.4% lighter than stainless, so with paint I'm sure it's the same, lol.

Made it easy to weld with MIG, cheaper to buy, and easy to work with. I didn't have a TIG to weld aluminum.

Works great, and I ran 11.8's with my crappy d-series.

 

In order to get nice weld roots on ALU you also need to backpurge it.

 

You don't backpurge aluminum.

 

By that same measure the hot side aluminum piping would be taking the heat out from the super hot pressurized air and putting it back into the engine bay, which effect is negated on the cold side. So the effect you're talking about is more or less equal on both sides of the equation (honestly, more heat will be likely removed from the hot side due to the much larger differential in temperature than the cold side).

Either way, this is all excrutiatingly negligable due to high CFM and velocity of the air inside the piping.

 

been there. cost as much as aluminum.

this was way back when I only had a MIG though.

 

To get code quality roots, yes, you really do need to. If you don't care about full penetration (which for boost piping why would you) then don't.

 

Reviving this thread to get a "optimal thickness" on the Aluminum pipes. Looking at global tech for 4" charge piping and a stainless up pipe.....

Thanks.