Intercooler piping just got in, and I'm glad I thoroughly inspected it all. The piping is black supposedly powder coated on the outside, but there's no coating on the inside. The product description claimed they were aluminum pipes, so that shouldn't matter. But I found corrosion inside some of the pipe. I did check them with a magnet, so they have to be a non ferrous metal, but I don't believe aluminum corrodes like this. The worst pipe was one of the two 180* bends, which I deemed unusable. Thankfully, I only needed one of those. The two straight sections also had light corrosion, but those will be easy to clean up and use. As far as the 45* and 90* bends, they were pretty clean. Situations like this are the reason I like to avoid ordering from ebay, but that's just my opinion, and experience.

45*


90*


180*


Straight

 

I finally got around to replacing that cracked side cover on the 4t80e. Other than that I've pretty much made no progress. I just haven't had the motivation to go use an angle grinder and welder on some stainless steel in my 105+ degree garage. But I'm trying to start making little bits of progress on the header fabrication. Tonight I got the two sets of three pipes that I cut for the collectors to finally fit well enough to were I'm confident I can weld them. I looked for pre made collectors. but couldn't really find what I wanted for a price I was happy with. I found exactly what I was looking for, a 1.5" three into one schedule 10 collector (link) but they're 100$ each. At first I didn't want to spend 200$ on the collectors for these headers, but after how many hours I spent trying to find a template online, cutting, and making the collectors fit right, I should've just bought the pre made ones.

 

Those pipes look pretty crazy if that's supposed to be aluminum. Does it feel heavy enough to be cheap stainless?

I just don't know how they'd get that much buildup in there. Certainly looks way worse than bare mill run aluminum tube. It certainly forms an oxide layer, but that sure doesn't look like typical aluminum oxide.


I know what you mean on those collectors too. 4-1 are a dime a dozen due to the I4 and V8 markets. 3-1 seem to be crazy priced in comparison. I had thought about making some DIY ones right about the time I got this smoking deal on used TOG extremes. The two collectors alone would've cost me what I paid for the whole set of complete headers, so I scrapped that idea. Certainly your situation is different though as they don't have off the shelf manifolds to do what you're trying to do.

 

I don't have any experience with aluminium vs stainless outside of what I'm currently doing. I have the 1.5" and 2.5" stainless for the turbo exhaust, and compared to that, the intercooler pipes are much lighter. But the intercooler pipes are less than half the thickness of the stainless pipe I have, so I really couldn't tell. Even if it is bad stainless, would it develope the reddish/brown rust like you'd see on mild steel?

As far as off the shelf parts, ZZP does have their turbo exhaust pipes, but like I've mentioned before, I think the design is poor. Also, I'm not sure how thick of a wall their exhaust piping is. It kind of looks like thin wall stuff like most cheap headers are made of. I'm using schedule 10 pipe for the headers I'm building.

 

Yes, it is possible. One good example is 400 series stainless used in exhaust. It can completely rust over in the right conditions in use, although its much more resistant to complete rust through than a mild steel.

Combine that with questionable melt mixes due to the country of origin, and its certainly possible to have legitimate surface rust.

If it really is aluminum though, I've got no idea on that one. Maybe they cut it on a wet saw that cuts all kinds of stuff? Of course if that was the case, it'd also wipe off.

 

Things just got interesting.

 

Is your turbo installed / running good?

IMO, given all the changes you're making at once, I'd get it up and running good on the stock pcm first. Then swap over the wiring / pcm to the new. Doing it all at the same time could end up making troubleshooting issues very difficult with all of the changes at once.

 

I get where you're coming from, and usually I'd agree with you. But in my circumstance, I feel like I don't have an option, and it's not really necessary. I can't tune the turbo setup past atmospheric pressure on the stock ECU, and I'm not going to switch to a SC PCM and MAP sensor when I now have the option of going straight to the HP. And I don't really feel like it's necessary, because the trans swap and turbo kit shouldn't affect idle all that much. I figured out why the engine in the parts car wouldn't idle with the 4t80e. It was the heavily ported TB, and what I did to the IAC. With all the stuff that I know runs great on the current engine, I shouldn't have a problem with getting the car to at least start and run with the HP. I've got a good base tune file already created, thanks to the help of someone over on the Holley Forum.

 

Why can't you tune past atmospheric? I'm assuming your concern is pegging the MAP, but 3800 people do that all the time (myself included- I've got a SC MAP, but it still pegs a fraction of a second after the BBV closes). You just tune it via MAF in the pcm.

TBH, even if you did do the map / pcm swap, you'd have maxed it anyways on any decently sized turbo setup as the 3800 flows so bad.

 

You're right. I have started thinking in terms of Holley EFI tuning, which most of the tuning is done in the base fuel table. Its X axis is rpm, and Y is MAP. I don't really want to deal with the outdated PCM and HP Tuners anymore.