So what you are seeing here are the engines of modification that I used to complete my latest entry on my 5.3 to do list From left to right you see my 4-1/2" DeWalt mini grinder, My Ultrapro in line air motor, fitted with a mini wire wheel, samples of after and before, or the consequences to a 3" zip wheel when it feeds on cast steel and my 3" cut off air motor.
The victim of all this aggression. This is the passenger's side exhaust manifold that came with the 5.3 as part of the purchase. Visible in the picture is the circumferential crack in the main tube between 3 and 4, moving from right to left. That crack extends around the circumference for about 300 out of 360 degrees and it is likely that it is only the upper flange that is keeping both sections together. This was the part that was the subject of a repair/replace discussion a while back. Replace won.
So the clunker became a guinea pig. The first exploration done was to see if the EGR boss, present but not machined or drilled and tapped, was still hollow or just a lump of extraneous metal that could be safely shaved off. As the pictures show, it is still hollow. That aside however, it is still possible to shave down the flange itself at least as far as the raw surface of the casting, which is what I ended up doing with its replacement There are NO pictures of the modified manifolds at this point, because, I still have to get in between the tubes and shave down the casting flash that is there. It might be a job for...........El Dre-mel.
And last, this is a before and after shot of what I was hoping to accomplish. On the left is the raw boss that was included as part of the casting and meant to accept a screw that would hold the heat guard in place. In total, there are 6 of these little bosses located in various places on the casting as a whole. As you would expect, the screws are toast. i did persuade a number of them to allow themselves to be removed but had to face about as many holdouts who tended to commit suicide by round over. Not sure why, the scrap of sheet metal they were supposed to hold in place had long since rotted out around them and only took a few minutes to rip off and religate to the metal recycle bin.
So the question became, can I shave off these bosses since I can't use them, and really don't want to, or would I be doomed to failure due to the tubes being too thin that any metal getting removed would blow open a hole?
The after shot on the right says it all. Using the 3" air cut-off tool and micro thin cut off wheels I was able to get in close and personal and cut away about 50-75 percent of each boss, leaving a stump to still be dealt with. By gently shaving down the stumps with my 4.5 and a 40 flap wheel I could both remove the remaining material and reshape the contour of what remained at the same time. This let me blend everything to achieve what you see on the right side tube. I killed two of the 40 gr flap wheels doing it but they were both used and about used up so no new wheels were harmed in achieving my goal. Remember all this got done to the test mule, just so I could learn whether or not I could it with the two manifolds I planned to use for real.
As I pointed out in a previous thread, none of this is about performance. This exercise is about esthetics from beginning to end. It is about learning how far i could go and how much I could remove from the stock casting to get a result that looks more polished and finished to the eye, plus being easier to work with and lighter as an additional result. if I wanted performance, I have several suggestions in hand from various participants from hereabouts. Right now I am back in a buy vs build situation and, with winter coming on, have to resort my priorities over and over in the coming weeks to get as ready as possible just in case this world's populations go into lemming mode again. Bother.
As I said above, the pair that I am going to use still need to go through having their casting flash removed, particularly in some tight and nasty places. Method for this as yet to be decided.
Unlike most of my picture shows, this one is different in one major respect:
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!, DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!!!
Okay, Attention grabber time. What I did with these manifolds involves both rust and metal dust, wire wheel shrapnel, cutoff wheel dust and aggregate, and inherent sharp metal edges. This is NOT a tee shirt and shorts exercise. For what I did, I used a heavy welding coat for body protection, a full dust mask, full face mask, my D'veetos instead of my regular prescription glasses, full audio cans or sound mufflers instead of just ear plugs, and heavy leather gloves from the welding deck. In addition, I elected to do this job with the main door open and the vise out on the approach ramp, with the breeze blowing away from me.
The point here is/was to keep the dust and debris from coming at me as much as possible because, while this isn't P65 territory, the inhalation of rust or metallics can tear up your lungs, (think COPD here), if done over time. The shrapnel generated by the cutting and grinding can cause injury. Obviously, to maintain control of air driven tools in tight quarters you have to be up close and personal with the tool; thus the need for the full dust mask. Mine is a 3M product and no, I am not flogging their products here. After I was done, I dug out the long tube air gun and blew out the bay from a distance; it all went outside onto the approach ramp and I blew that off into the weeds. For some reason they can tolerate that kind of debris; oh, the joys of being a persecuted herb.
Just saying here.
Nick
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