dath

Okay, I'm a bit miffed right now. I've had bad experience with shops making poor welds on exhaust with their mig welders, so I thought I'd just use an oxy-acet I borrowed from a friend. I've welded before, but am by no means an expert. (This is actually for my S10, but if it works out, I'm going to redo my Corvette exhaust with 2 1/2 pipe sometime this year myself.) So I took the whole muffler/tailpipe assembly out and cut off the sections of pipe I need to reuse with the new muffler. I expanded the muffler intake side just a bit so the old section of pipe would slide in. I cleaned both sections of pipe with a wire wheel before mating them up. Slipped the pipe in the muffler and it was a nice tight fit. Setup the welder and tried a #2 tip. Seemed too big, so I went to a 00 tip. Seemed like it was perhaps a bit small, but may work. I figured I wouldn't need any filler material since I had a nice overlapping section, so I went to work. The metal on the muffler would melt as expected, but the exhaust pipe section would never pool and would eventually just blow through. What gives? Am I just too unskilled, or is there really a good reason not to use oxy-acet? Perhaps filler would help, but I can't see how since I couldn't pool the exhaust pipe metal?

TIA,
-dath

daily_driver

use a mig welder...

:cheers:

ram82fire

Your problem is usually caused by a coating on the pipe ,, and you are right if you get it all right the weld will be fine . I have mig ,tig,& oxy/acet and use the all at different time and applications . As always there was a lot of kick azz stuff built before mig or tig !! keep the faith :cool:

dath

Yeah, I called my old aviation instructor (we're still friends) and he said I should bring it by tomorrow and he or the automotive instructor can give me a hand. Apparently the automotive instructor always uses oxy/acet for his exhaust work. Probably filler would have helped. While I was still in school I was pretty good at this with random pieces of metal, so I know I should still have it somewhere in the brain. I think the old pipe is just not as easy to weld as nice shiny new stuff, even if it is cleaned up for whatever reason.

Thanks for the sanity check! I was sure it could be done :yesnod:
-dath

ddn

I cut the exhaust off my '68 with Oxy-Acet :D

oger

They used Oxy-Acet on exhaust for a long time before migs became the thing. Migs are easier not better.

dath

I figured... I've done both and in many ways I found that oxy/acet was easier for me. You can take your time a bit more with gas, whereas the mig goes pretty quickly and builds up quickly if you aren't paying enough attention. I've just never welded exhaust specifically and for some reason it wasn't working for me. I think it'll work much better with filler, but I thought it would look better without. Of course it looks like crap now that I've made my mistakes on it. Best learn on the S10 rather than my baby. :eek:

-dath

dath

I prefer to use a chain cutter so I get a nice clean cut to work with:-> Maybe I'm just picky or something though :D