EBAY Turbo Manifold?? YOUR EXPIERENCE!!

[SamuraiSam]

My manifold? I have never bought one of those POS. I have worked at a few shops, and one shop in particular where I encountered LOTS of customers with LOTS of cheap eBay setups. The tubing was thin usually. Thicker stuff will still crack when its not welded properly, which is very common. Welds look great and have poor penetration.

[SamuraiSam]

[whowhatwhere]

Most high end Manifolds are THICK tubing.

Wrong. If you look at a real race car, you will find that they have properly braced THIN walled (16ga,18ga) manifolds. The key is properly supporting the weight of the turbo, so that the header can expand and contract without cracking from the weight.


Oh, but most people are lazy, and just buy the 666fab adapter that uses freaking crazy thick stainless.

[SamuraiSam]

I have looked at several race cars that use manifolds from companies like Full-Race and they have thick tubing.

I have installed a few very expensive turbo manifolds and they use thick tubing. Higher quality and a lot thicker then the pictures I took and posted 3 posts up.



This is a Tomei manifold (the model is called "Expreme")for a Nissan Skyline GT-R. It is used on a lot of race cars, and it has some pretty thick flanges and beefy tubing.

[SamuraiSam]

I just wanted to add that the primary reasoning for being moderate with the tubing is due to weight issues, and that regardless of weight issues, it is always important to address the weight of the turbocharger, downpipe, wastegate, and dump tube. On a street car, weight is not as important as on an F1 car that uses insane thinwall tubing headers which are always perfectly supported and fabricated with an unimaginable amount of R&D spent to ensure that the header does not break.

Something that is above my head (as i am not a fabricator by any stretch of the imagination) is dealing with the expansion rate of different materials which can lead to fatigue/failure and is something to pay attention to when looking at bracing options, and something that eBay manifolds do not take into account as they churn out copycat manifold after copycat manifold.

[M3 Ryan]

I have this manifold, albeit modded, so I will add my 2 cents.
I bought this from someone in the Dan Pinter nightmare GB. I had it sit for 8mo when I finally realised that the flange was in fact backwards. I took it to my excellent machinest who cut it, ground the pipes flat to match the flange and then rewelded it all back together. He then added an external wastegate port and integrated it into my custom 3" SS downpipe he made for me. I paid $180 for the manifold work and $500 for an external wastegate port with a custom downpipe to integrate it back into the system. My manifold has been in use for 6,500 miles and 14months. I have no cracks, although I do have a slight exahust leak that can be heard on occasion against a wall while driving.
If I did it all again, I would have bought a Jon Volk manifold. I didn't have 2k at the time for the manifold and custom downpipe so I was kinda stuck. The car makes good power but the T70 turbo is a bit slow on the spool at less than 3500rpm..
I will be pulling it all apart to replace the head in a few months, and will install my jet-hot coated turbo and check the manifold at that time. I may have it coated to help reduce the chance that it may crack.
Here are some pics of how I had it modded:

[backtrail69]

Wrong. If you look at a real race car, you will find that they have properly braced THIN walled (16ga,18ga) manifolds. The key is properly supporting the weight of the turbo, so that the header can expand and contract without cracking from the weight.


Oh, but most people are lazy, and just buy the 666fab adapter that uses freaking crazy thick stainless.

Sch10 is the standard in long life manifolds....

[nando]

john volk FTW. anyone wanna sponsor me $900? :p