Tailpipe expander

[Blue85]

I'm trying to build an exhaust out of 3" 16 gauge 409 and having trouble expanding it. I just broke one of these:

Is there anything better to grab? I don't know if I can get the old exhaust back on without it crumbling.

 

[ryoken]

yup, I've owned the older snap on one for nearly 25 yr's (they have a different style these days..)...... works great...



used it..... exactly, twice...

 

[dremu]

I've used the HF version of that, which is prolly the same and is, unsurprisingly, cheap and nasty. The O-rings rotted away quickly, but I seem to recall that it'll work if I WD40 the thing, and magically hold it in place by hand. Hit it with the cordless impact and it did its job.

-- A

 

[Blue85]

I read the reviews of the HF one and everyone seems to be stripping the threads. On this one I broke one of the ramp pieces, which is some kind of porous pot metal. The threads did pretty well to stalling the impact at 110psi.

It's giving me a cone shape at the end instead of a nice flared end. I can remember using one successfully before, so I'm not sure what's different. Maybe the far end was damaged and not sliding up like it should. I might just swap for another and keep trying. I hit the threads with anti-sieze, but the ramps seemed kind of oily so I left them alone. It has definitely been used before.

 

[blazinzuk]

Um butt weld?

 

[beags86]

These things are junk. Went through many of them little to no success.
Stainless: you will most likely even have less success. I typically light of the ol' torch and carefully put some heat into the pipe I need to expand. Stainless isn't as responsive to heat but there should be enough wiggle room.

 

[Blue85]

Well that's 2 of same tool broken in one night.

Yeah, maybe butt weld is sounding good. My main reason for expanding was to get good weld penetration with no backgassing or weird gaps to fill. I don't want to buy a $280 tool to put together $80 worth of pipe. I did want one clamp connection so I can take it apart there if needed.

If I cut everything to the right length, I wonder how much some exhaust shop would charge to expand the ends for me.

 

[sweetk30]

3" pipe and stainless = get a real machine shop to open it up .

the cheepy tool aint gona cut it .

 

[Blue85]

I now fully concur with you. Hopefully in the future I will look into these things before I start. I just assumed it would be like any other exhaust work I've done.

I got the pieces cut up and even that is harder to do with the stainless. Muffler man is going to help me out.

 

[Blue85]

This is the 2nd tool I broke last night:

Muffler man expanded the joints for me and charged $10. I probably should have just drove the car down there with the mandrel bends and had them do the whole job. I'm sure I will still have tons of grief getting everything lined up.

I'm just copying the existing tailpipe, which is a little different routing than stock. It was obviously fabbed with a bunch of butt welds in mild steel bends.

 

[sweetk30]

I can do a lot of stuff my self . . . . but exhaust and paint I farm out to good local shop and friend who paints.

 

[Blue85]

I couldn't find any local shops that work in stainless or with mandrel bends. I found one place online offering a 3" mandrel exhaust for this car, but it was like $250 for just the tailpipe and it would be 3 pieces to put together and possibly still some custom cutting/fitting. Probably the best approach would have been to live with crush bends and aluminized and just let a shop do it. This is almost always the cheapest, easiest and fastest approach. I just wanted to keep it full 3" all the way through and have stainless.

 

[brans87]

Looking good there! Finding someone who does mandrel bent is harder them some think I drove 45 mins one way for my exhaust but for price was worth it in my area.