Is this possible with either a stick welder or mig?

I'm working on a turbo manifold.. done lots of other stuff but never any dissimular metals and never had any formal training.


thanks

 

You can't even CUT cast with a torch (not really anyway) You can however Braze the two together (Acetylene welding...). Solidox welding etc. Cast iron is whack.

 

welding cast iron requires a cast iron welders oven

 

For cast iron, just proper pre-heat & cooling, along with special high nickel filler rod, if I'm not mistaken... Cast iron and regular "standard" steel might have different coefficients of expansion, so that might be a bit more difficult. When they cool, one shrinks more than the other, and stresses the joint. Are you thinking of welding something to the exhaust housing of the turbo?

 

na,

I've got a eaton supercharged formula, so i visit this board alot.

well i just picked up a little honda prelude 91 model. I want to turbo it but no one makes any header flanges or anything

So my idea was to cut the stock manifold up and use it to make a turbo header.

 

there is a turbo header for almost every honda I have ever seen.

a few have modified some form of DSM exhaust manifold to work also

if all else fails buy a "DC sports" header (it uses a top half and bottom half) and just use the top half as a turbo header.

 

No one makes a turbo header for a B20A

they make it for the B20B and everythign else

DC sports doesn't even make a header for mine anymore, they did but discontinued it.

I'm disscussing possiblities of modifiing a B18 turbo log header off ebay.. the flanges are diffferent but it doesn't appear to be too different.

http://www.preludepower.com/phpBB2/v...r=asc&start=45

 

log system would be best... welding cast iron is a PIA, let alone welding it to a diff type of iron.steel

log setups shouldnt be too bad to do honestly, and if you can weld, something you could do with some careful cutting, and welding and measuring!

 

the problem is cutting a flange without a plazma torch

 

rootser,

www.overblownmotorsports.com

talk to this guy

Zac

 

Stock JDM tubular exhaust manifolds on the Nissan SR20DE have a cast flange for the exhaust ports and a cast "collector" that has regular bent tubular (steel?) pipes connecting the two cast pieces.

I drilled a hole in the cast part (burned up 2 hole cutting blades) and welded on an O2 bung with my little MIG. Seemed to weld "normal" to me at least. No leaks after 7 weeks, of course that's a lot different than welding a flange to mount a turbo on.

 

Cast welds and cuts fine.

You can cut it much faster with a metal cutting blade or abrasive wheel then normal steel and especially stainless.

Welding it depends on what exactly it is and what you're welding to what.

If you're welding thin steel to a casting then it's a piece of cake, just go at it with a mig, stick, tig…

If it's casting to casting you may have to do some preheat to keep it from cracking as you go, usually not but it more depends on the shapes and relative thicknesses.

Casting to thick steel (like a ½" turbo flange) I'd preheat to 350-500*. Getting it even is more important the actual temp. The preheat will get both materials to partially expand so the expansion from the localized heat of the welding or when you run the car will not cause as big a dimensional change as it would if you welded a cold piece (has nothing to do with penetration like when welding aluminum) preventing cracks.

WRT to actual welder settings you'll want to use a fraction of the power that you normally would to weld steel that thickness (If you set it to what you would use for steel you'll blow through instantly, you'll just see parts of your casting shooting off and disappearing). You'll probably see better welds if you clean things up as well as you can before hand and use a higher shielding gas setting, that will really help.

WRT to filler rod/wire… there are special fillers for this but I've never used them. You really just need to use a higher grade then the metals that you're joining. In most cases normal mild steel, ER70S6 will work great. If you do not know what your materials are (sometimes you'll find something that’s cast steel or something) then use some stainless wire just to be safe (I wouldn't use it for large fillet welds in cast iron though unless nothing else really wants to work, it's expansion coefficient is different enough from cast iron that you'll eventually get cracking, and you'll never get as nice a weld with stainless wire and a mig or stick). I believe the filler that is packaged as specific for welding steel castings is usually the same rod or very close to what is used for inconnel.

FWIW, I've even had good luck doing it with flux core in a MIG, OTOH, I actually like flux core for most applications, if it wasn't for the extra mess during the welding I'd probably use it in a lot of places most people use normal mig wire.

 

He told me to talk to a machine shop

 

Sweet... your giving me confidence.. especially with my little mig

 

Awesome, It truely sounds like it will work.

It sucks being away from home and not being able to try this stuff out .. instead your stuck asking about it. I'm going to mig a mild steel box to a 1/2 turbo flange then I'm going to weld that thinner box to the manifold..

I think it should work pretty well..

 

if you have a welder already why don't you try to fab up your own turbo header?

 

Its not the easiest metal to weld, though i have welded cast iron to itself, you do need special rods to weld it, you must preheat the metal and weld it imediately, after welding it is recommended that you break off the slag, and then take a punch and peen the heck out of it to prevent it from cracking then you repeat the process until you are done and allow it to cool on its own. peening forces the metal to expand as it is contracting thus it should eliminate cracks.

with a stick welder, i can effectly weld aluminium, stainless, and all the other steels, including cast iron. I weld exhaust with a gas torch or the stick welder. no problems yet. but mig or tig is the way to go.

 

i'd think the real question is cast what since most metals can be cast

 

ede, you're right, and that's why I was advising to use a higher grade or stainless filler... the normal "mild steel" rod is a higher grade then cast iron, and stainless filler is higher then cast steel (and expands at 2x the rate that mild steel does, better matching some of these pieces). The "special fillers" are pretty much the same stuff but at 2x or more the cost.

FWIW, as far as I can tell, the piening thing is someplace between an "old welder's tail" and a way to compensate for not quite using the right material… I would be very surprised if you used a filler the required it that did not eventually cause cracks in the part as it's heat cycled. To be honest, I've welded a bunch of castings that I didn't care so much about without preheating and have never had cracking problems with them, but I've preheated everything that I gave a damn about…

 

only cast iron pieces that ever gave me trouble was manifolds and water pumps. some alloy cast steel has been hard for me to weld, but again it's more a matter of correct filler metal. i don't pein, preheat and post heat are more important. i've welded several cast iron heads with no problems.

 

Take a look at www.homadeturbo.com
Hope it works for you, it will come up for me at work, but not at home, anyway, thay make bolt on adaptors when they install turbos on thier Hondas. That site doesn't actually sell anything, but shows many different ideas and ways people have turbocharged thier Hondas.