Do anybody happens to has ... some flanges?
What it is that had happened was is that, you see, my header done flappified off its detachments.
Translation: My header used to be self-supporting, except for one half-inch bolt from the muffler to the crossbar behind the case. It was all one piece, and it looks like my gaskets have been pinched by the flex of the header as I've steadily beaten the crap out of the car.
That being the case, my pipes would be well served if I carefully placed the new pipe heads and fresh coppers into their ports, tightened them, and then cut the pipe sections off to an exact length.
What I want to do is attach some flanged disconnects to the bottom of the first section of each pipe, and then make some hangers to weld to the rest of the exhaust so this doesn't happen again. I need eight flat flanges, preferably the two-bolt pinch type, in at least 3/16" thick and 1 5/8" ID -- and nobody around here's got any I can walk up to a counter and buy. The paper gaskets aren't a problem, but nobody's got eight of the same pieces of hardware.
If I have to cut some from a piece of plate steel and do all that grinding, it's going to be a pain in the tucas and take me a day or two.
I've talked this over with Sartwell, and he thinks also that the top of the pipes Wolfgang so graciously gave me are of some kind of alloy which doesn't readily lend itself to welding; that it might have some kind of silver solder sort of thing going on there at the seam. Since I have zero experience there, I might be screwing up by trying to graft these things together without a flange at the end. If worse comes to worst, I'm just going to re-surface the pipes I have and cut the bungs off a little shorter, but that'll involve a lot of work, too. And a depth gauge made of popsicle sticks or something.
Could y'all check your bins and boxes? Pretty please? Time's getting kind of short. I'm not driving the car at the moment, since I don't want French fried valves this close to the Dragon run.
(It should also be noted that I have no frigging idea what I'm doing and have great potential to REALLY dork this up if I get it wrong.)
