Intake is aluminum?

[laserjock]

Forget a spool gun. Who wants to always be changing out the itty-bitty 2-lb spools of wire? Ain't nobody got time for dat....

Push-pull gun FTW!!!!! A complete setup with drive rolls in the feeder as well as drive rolls out in the gun handle. I can feed .035" (small) 4043 alloy (soft) wire all day long and absolutely no feeding problems....


Also, not just any TIG will work on aluminum. You want AC output with high-frequency arc starting capability....

Holy crap!!! I just went and looked at one of these and for that price I can buy a pretty darn nice TIG welder or a REALLY nice MIG. Maybe if I were doing it for a living but wow. Really my hang up is not the cost of the spool gun but the fact that adding it onto my machine will result in what is still a marginal solution. It's just not a big enough machine to justify that. I do have to say that it has impressed me. I have only ever tripped the thermal overload circuit once and that was doing some long beads on heavy material. It will also run 0.035 wire just fine which it says it 0.030 is the max. That really works it though. I bought it to do body work and light fab and it does as good a job at that as the operator. If and when I need more, I'll have to invest in more machine or talk someone else into investing for me so I can borrow it.

This AHP is getting really good reviews and seems to be about as capable as sizeable Miller. I of course caveat that with I don't know crap about TIG welding yet.

http://www.amazon.com/AHP-AlphaTIG-...F8&qid=1436280567&sr=8-1&keywords=tig+welders

 

[sjwelds]

Oh I didn't say it was gonna be cheap....

It'd be interesting to weld with one of those "off-brand" TIG units and see how it compares. We have a Miller Dynasty 200 with water-cooled torch. Now there's a welding machine! However, when it says it will weld 1/4" aluminum, well, yes, it will do it, but it will take a long time. 200 amps just isn't enough to weld 1/4" at high rates of speed. Pre-heating helps, of course.

And that is why we have both MIG and TIG. One process doesn't necessarily fill the bill for everything.

 

[FarmerFrank]

did you have the manifold bolted down when you welded it up?

No couldn't figure out how to smuggle the whole engine into work to weld it up. No spool gun at the farm

 

[laserjock]

That would have required a very large lunch box.

 

[FarmerFrank]

.....I had a huge one.... It paid for itself in no time.

 

[jaluhn83]

I didn't have mine bolted down and had no problems with it. The intake is a large enough mass and aluminum has high enough thermal conductivity that I wouldn't expect to see much trouble with warping. I would try to do the welding in small symmetric segments though rather than just hog it on there.

I would also try to avoid a setup like the one pictured where the pipe enters the intake at an angle as it may result in one bank getting better air flow than the other and thus uneven combustion. Not sure how much of an issue this would really actually be, but still worth thinking about. Mine uses a elbow dumping into the center of the intake with a cobbled up flare to try and get as even of a distribution as possible. It's also pointing forward for use with an intercooler - harder to do something right off the turbo like that and be square, but on the other hand if you're going to the trouble of making a custom intake, you may as well built it for an IC as well.