Custom Titanium Exhaust

[Duncan]

Has anyone got one? Is titanium easy to find or is it really unobtainium? Any tricks to welding it? What wall thickness to use/

Look like I need about 5m in about 2.5"

[Yawn]

I think theres one problem in obtaining the raw mats and one more problem in getting someone who works with it.

If you do find someone though, id be interested too

[Roy]

Its not overly difficult to weld, its more about you having to have the right equipment. Its not easy to cut or work with, so just like you need a good expensive TIG welder you will also need the right blades in your tube cutter or grinder

[Duncan]

ok that sounds positive. is it readily available?

[Bliksem]

Short answer to that would probably be no... not an overly large demand for titanium tube afaik... tube is mostly industry driven resulting in Mild steel being at the top of the availability list then Stainless followed by Aluminium.

Having said that I'd be interested to know how you go with this.... Are you choosing to go with titanium for weight reasons?

Edited February 2, 2008 by MintR33

[holes]

ive got a mate who just made a manifold up for a rb25 out of titanium cost him well over $1500 in materials im pretty sure he got it from the us or uk and its sold by the mm. I think uras do a titanium exhaust maybe check them out

[STATUS]

Cheers for the heads up ^^^ only drama is raw materials are getting scarce and expensive, even the big suppliers are geting rations i waited a fair while for my last shipment of PET-IR exhaust due to material shortage.

[Yawn]

As in you sell a titanium exhaust off the shelf? Or you make titanium exhausts?

[VB-]

sounds like hes selling off the shelf, his supplier had a shortage

anywho, AFAIK titanium needs to be welded in an argon rich environment, so for pipe and shit you gotta cap the ends,and fill it with argon and bleed all the air out of it as to protect the back of the weld etc from all acounts i've heard its a bit of a pain to weld

[Roy]

sounds like hes selling off the shelf, his supplier had a shortage

anywho, AFAIK titanium needs to be welded in an argon rich environment, so for pipe and shit you gotta cap the ends,and fill it with argon and bleed all the air out of it as to protect the back of the weld etc from all acounts i've heard its a bit of a pain to weld

Thats nothing special. Ask me and you shoudl also do this when you are welding stainless steel.

Yo dont need all the expensive bungs, a bit of masking tape with a small 1mm hole pricked into the top of it. In the other end plug up an argon line (we used to used to weld with varigon and purge with Argon 5.0 which is more expensive but helps control the heat tint ytou ned up with stainless....and important thing in the industry i used to work in)

You can give it 20 seconds, or you can be anal like they do in certain industries and use a gas detector to test that the oxygen has been purged from the line. For an exhaustm there is no need to go to those lenghts to ensure that the oxygen has been evacuated.

You want to purge the tube as it does several things. It means you dont get welding slag on the ID. You want to get full penetration when you weld so the inert atmosphere on the inside ensures that you font get crappy cauliflower on the weld internals and also the slightly poitive pressure on the inside means you dont get too much penetration and a reduction in id. LOL, we had to also use maganhellic gauges on the outlet of the purge and record th eitnernal pressure o fht eargon purge when we weleded....but again this was in the semiconductor industry.

So, havign tp purge somehting is nothing difficult. Teh secret will be using the right tools to fab it and ensure good fit up. From there the welding wont be as difficult.

As for where to get it. You can get it from a number of exotic metal merchants. We used to get all our chrome moly and titanium through the same mob. They were in Perth, i will see if i can dig out their details from an old diary

[STATUS]

sounds like hes selling off the shelf, his supplier had a shortage

anywho, AFAIK titanium needs to be welded in an argon rich environment, so for pipe and shit you gotta cap the ends,and fill it with argon and bleed all the air out of it as to protect the back of the weld etc from all acounts i've heard its a bit of a pain to weld

yeah i deal with a lot of manufacturers on a day to day basis in ROC, Taiwan and Japan and all are struggling to maintain reliable sources of titanium. Now im not say ing you cant get it you can in small qty's but to do a production run of say even 20 systems (small order like my last one) is an issue... even for GREDDY and other majors.

[SysLink67]

So besides the weight reduction and bling factor of Ti are there any other + ve's?

- Its very expensive to get it , if you can get it....

- Reguires extra attention to manufacture items = head damage ( It's ok for those with a welding background / Eng and then have a good quality TIG welder and bending equip and skills to do it)

- Also isn't Ti very Brittle, which might not be an issue with track only cars but surely not street cars.

I haven't looked into my metalurgy books recently but it doesn't Ti have issue with the whole Heat / cold factors hense increase brittle factor with age....

Could be way off..... I was thinking of using Ti myself but found 304 SS to far out weigh the total pros of Using Ti.

I hope you do get to do your pipe work of out of Ti. would be interest to see results.

[Duncan]

I'm only interested in the weight reduction. I had Just Jap's Ti targa exhaust the other day and it is literrally kilos lighter than the mild steel one I could afford.

now exhaust is free on the race car I will run 2 pipes straight out the side, so diameter is smaller (whatever I can get larger than 60mm), the run is short and the shape is simple.

sound like a pain to weld though I will need to find a specialist.

[STATUS]

So besides the weight reduction and bling factor of Ti are there any other + ve's?

- Its very expensive to get it , if you can get it....

- Reguires extra attention to manufacture items = head damage ( It's ok for those with a welding background / Eng and then have a good quality TIG welder and bending equip and skills to do it)

- Also isn't Ti very Brittle, which might not be an issue with track only cars but surely not street cars.

I haven't looked into my metalurgy books recently but it doesn't Ti have issue with the whole Heat / cold factors hense increase brittle factor with age....

Could be way off..... I was thinking of using Ti myself but found 304 SS to far out weigh the total pros of Using Ti.

I hope you do get to do your pipe work of out of Ti. would be interest to see results.

we used a titanium exhaust on a few of our cars and they are awesome, the weight saving on a GTR and gtst is 12.3kg!! over the std system (std 18kg and PETIR is 5.1kg) they are relatively strong and will take gutter smacks fine, but i would not make a manifold out of it as by the time you use titanium of sufficient thickness it will not weight much less than a off the shelf item . The benefit of titanium in exhausts is in low stress applications you can use very thin material... hence the weight saving.

im sure to find enough material to do side pipes should prevent no real issue.

[Mr Jollwah]

http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1245

[Sydneykid]

I have a 90 mm Trust Ti cat back on the R32GTST and it is almost 20 kgs lighter than the 3.25" Nismo cat back that it replaced, which is now on the Stagea. I have been looking (albeit not very hard) for a source so that I can make the cat forward section out of Ti as well. So Duncan, you find some Ti and I'll get it welded.

Cheers

Gary

[crack]

try airweld here in melbourne. not just titanium, but other exotic metals to. where i work has done some work for them in the past.

[gun32gtr]

i also have a 3 1/4 inch cat back titanium system which weighs 3.2kg and sounds unreal...

[Merli]

i also have a 3 1/4 inch cat back titanium system which weighs 3.2kg and sounds unreal...

Brand and specs on this one? Titanium cat backs are very light, but not THAT light.... 5.x kgs seems to be the norm from what I've seen.

[KISIN]

I have a 900 mm Trust Ti cat back on the R32GTST and it is almost 20 kgs lighter than the 3.25" Nismo cat back that it replaced, which is now on the Stagea. I have been looking (albeit not very hard) for a source so that I can make the cat forward section out of Ti as well. So Duncan, you find some Ti and I'll get it welded.

Cheers

Gary

Wow !