Cracked driver side torque monster, and massive welding failure

[Jeff213]

So I have had a crack in my drivers side torque monster for a while and its been getting worse and worse. I pulled it off, looked at it, thought i could weld it up. It was cracked on the outside.

I welded up the crack on the outside and it turned out that the crack went all the way through the collector inside where there isnt much access. I tried to weld it up with a stick welder and stainless rods, ended up blowing holes in it, and just started dumping metal in until the whole collector was filled up with metal.

Turns out putting that much heat into a header warps the hell out of it. It is a lot easier to weld on thick metal than on thin exhaust tubing..

I ordered a drivers side factory exhaust manifold for now to throw on and get the truck going again but I am now looking for either a torque monster or obx drivers side header if anyone has one laying around..

 

[C420sailor]

Stick welding stainless tubing…bold move.

This is a TIG job, through and through. Stop drill the crack, and I’d want backing gas inside the header. The beauty of TIG is that you can slowly increase/decrease the heat. Stick is on/off. Stainless, but more so Inconel, has a tendency to get brittle and crack if you come off the heat quickly at the end of the bead. Being able to slowly ramp down with the pedal is huge. Plus…backing gas.

Best of luck with the hunt. Expensive mistake for sure.

 

[Jeff213]

Stick welding stainless tubing…bold move.

This is a TIG job, through and through. Stop drill the crack, and I’d want backing gas inside the header. The beauty of TIG is that you can slowly increase/decrease the heat. Stick is on/off. Stainless, but more so Inconel, has a tendency to get brittle and crack if you come off the heat quickly at the end of the bead. Being able to slowly ramp down with the pedal is huge. Plus…backing gas.

Best of luck with the hunt. Expensive mistake for sure.

I have stick welded on kegs to make smokers, and made stainless plates and rails for my boat but even the keg material is thicker than the headers I think..

I have a tig welder and I did use that to weld outside even though I am not as proficient with tig, but there was absolutely no way to get the tig torch in between the spot where all 4 pipes come together above the collector which is why I went stick there, with an argon purge.

I don't think an exhaust shop would have touched it with the crack being in such a bad spot to weld, I probably should have just welded the outside and put it back on the truck with a smaller leak. I don't really look at it as an expensive mistake though since it was cracked anyway, nothing to lose really. I will have to weld the CARB plate from the torque monster on to the OBX if thats what I end up with, being in california and having to deal with smog bs.

 

[410Fortune]

Pictures?

 

[Jeff213]

Pictures?

Don't have any right now, and don't really want to post pictures because of how embaressingly bad it is, but its well beyond repair at this point. I made it way worse than it was by just trying to fill the center of the 4 pipes with molten metal not thinking about the fact that the whole thing would heat up and warp the way it did. I had it in a vise held by the individual pipe that goes to the front cylinder, and that got hot and moved so much that the flange is about 3/4" off of alignment with the other 4 pipes now.

I guess it sagged in the vise when it was super hot or just warped because of all the heat I put into it with the stick welder while trying to fill the center where all 4 pipes come together. I have given up on these headers.

My welds are also really bad, and I kept blowing holes. I was tig welding in patches of stainless over the holes, which seemed to be working when i noticed the flanges were so out of whack. Even the 3 that are are together on one piece of steel are slightly warped to the point they are not flat anymore. I was considering drilling and tapping a piece of steel and using it to try to realign the flanges but it seems like a lost cause at this point

I should have posted before I tried to do anything, I almost did by the post button was acting up for some reason and I couldn't click it and went outside and did my thing of trying to fix something and making it worse.

At least I wont have the 3 into 1 constriction while I try to source another header, since my passenger side is still good.

Anyway, hit me up if you have a spare header for the driver side on a scrap truck or in a box somewhere. I will be running oem for a while on the driver side, I might call bob and try to order just a driver side some time in the future, It isn't bad at all to install them in my truck with the 3 inch body lift on it, all I have to do is unbolt the steering column coupler and pull out the brake booster and I can work them in.

 

[410Fortune]

Is there any way to cut off the old collector and weld on a new?

 

[C420sailor]

Ah okay, fair enough. I’m not super familiar with these headers—pencil torch wouldn’t have worked? Or the ol’ acetylene…although I know very few guys weld that way anymore.

I wish we had a more reliable and affordable source for these headers

 

[Jeff213]

Ah okay, fair enough. I’m not super familiar with these headers—pencil torch wouldn’t have worked? Or the ol’ acetylene…although I know very few guys weld that way anymore.

I wish we had a more reliable and affordable source for these headers

oxy acetylene would have probably worked..pencil torch wouldnt have fit. It's over and done now, wish I could find a replacement header though.

 

[97Sandbox]

How bad is the damage really?

I'm building headers now from scratch and I robbed my collectors from old fox body headers. It's not easy, but if you cut carefully you can certainly section the collectors and re-weld the inside before welding a collector back on. Even starting with 2/3 of a TMH header you'll be miles ahead of where I started.

Also, I'm pretty sure TMH tubing is not stainless, maybe an incompatible electrode was part of the original issue? Otherwise, I don't think stick welding would be a problem as long as you stitch weld like you would for sheet metal.

 

[Jeff213]

It isnt as bad as the torque monsters you showed in your post. I have been thinking, maybe it is still repairable. The main problem is that the flange that is off by itself is out of alignment with the other 3 now, I think that if I get a new one piece exhaust flange for where it bolts to the heads I MIGHT be able to still make it work again, either by using the new exhaust flange to align the old ones and reweld the pipe or by welding the headers to the new exhaust flanges. The holes in the headers by the collector shouldn't be that hard for me to fix at this point.

I was on a time crunch when I was trying to fix them before, now that I am not on a time crunch anymore and have a factory manifold installed I may end up playing around with it eventually, if I am unable to source another drivers side obx or tmh anyway.

 

[97Sandbox]

How'd that #5 primary bend like that? You may be able to just bolt the 6/7/8 flange to something solid and us an adjustable wrench on the #5 flange to pull the tube back down. Since that flange is by itself, as long as it's close ish to the plane of the 6/7/8 flange, it should be able to pull the tube within reason when you bolt the flange to the head.

After all the welding, my flanges are not perfectly flat, but once a couple bolts go in, they have no trouble flattening out. There's more flex in the primaries than you may think.

 

[Jeff213]

I was holding it in a vise by the tube and welding on the collector and put too much heat into it and it warped/ sagged in the vise due to heat expansion and softening and gravity.

 

[97Sandbox]

Ah okay. In that case, you may be right to cut it off and re-weld.

I suppose you could just bolt the driver's side header to the passenger side header to use the other flange as a jig. Or just bolt it all to the head and tack it while it's mounted (careful not to bend in the tacked state though!).

 

[410Fortune]

Couldn’t it be heated up and then bent back carefully?

 

[Jeff213]

I am going to try that. I am not in a hurry right and I have other projects that are more important but I will be attempting to heat and bend it back eventually.

 

[Jeff213]

Got a new (to me) mig welder, I went a different route than 97sandbox. I figured it couldn't leak if there was nowhere for it to leak from. Welds arent pretty but it doesn't leak, hopefully it doesnt crack when I run it for a while. Welded it using co2 argon mix as shielding gas.

I was able to bend the warped tube back using an acetylene air torch and a piece of bar stock bolted to it for leverage. The flanges on the other 3 tubes were a little warped, so I cut the handle off of a file and used it like a plane keeping it flat against all 3 to manually machine the flanges back into flat. Below are my ugly welds, the test fit up, and the header after it went for a ride in the sandblaster and got a coat of 2000 degree rustoleum primer.

 

[410Fortune]

We gotta do what we gotta do!

 

[Jeff213]

What kind of gasket should I get for the little flange in the middle of the front driver's side tube that unbolts (the one that is unbolted in my paint pic)

a thicker than original gasket would help the holes that bolt to the heads line up with the other 3 ports, and the orignal gasket was trashed anyway. I don't think I can justify spending a lot of money on exhaust gasket material if there is a cheaper option. I thought about 1/8" thick copper to make my own flange gasket but that would be even more than buying exhaust gasket material, and the only copper i have around is more like 3/16 or 1/4", too thick i think for what i need.

I am hoping you might just know the size of gasket I need to order.

 

[410Fortune]

You can cut your own or order one

The info is here somewhere it is some porsche gasket that Robert used
Let me do a search it has been a few years since this came up

I cut my own gasket for that flange out of heavy duty exhaust gasket material