Tube Fabrication For Dummies: LSXcalade Gets New Exhaust! (Tricks I Use to Learn)

today we're doing some fab stuff making a downpipe for this thing finally after the one broke on race week making downpipe today don't go over there do not look it over dude until then don't don't look at what i'm doing either okay you know what we're just don't look at it it's not your business i can't help it you know you can't you can't help me so just don't even look at what i'm doing you're not allowed if i can't look at what you're doing you can't look at what i'm doing we have mutual understanding guess what suck it yeah we got to get him a freaking propeller hat now we're getting some good ideas you guys want to know how a lift actually works i've got the inner fender pulled out here this is what we're dealing with i use these v-bands uh these particular ones are from race part solutions because they got a thick shoulder on them which is nice and they use the same program so you can get an aluminum one and a stainless one and then use each half of either so this part's stainless because it makes the hard 180 and then the rest of it is aluminum and this is how they come they come with this o-ring in here and you basically just take that out and you can use it for exhaust just fine so that is what we're gonna build off of from there so i went to the gym got a table now it's after five everybody's gone which is when i'm really the most productive is when i'm by myself but now i can finally get going in here i got the box of tube over here from wolf aircraft and this stuff is super thick stuff really thick stuff still lighter than steel and no before you let go just use titanium well wolf doesn't make titanium so i'm not going to spend the money on titanium i find aluminum easy to work with just because with the the chop saw method there's no cleanup really you just take the d-bird tool and just and that's it it's quick it's easy it doesn't make a huge mess i mean it makes chips but the chips are big they're easy to vacuum and broom up i don't know i would just prefer working with aluminum over steel i don't know why it's kind of weird but that's just me so i'm going to get to taking a piece of pipe here have that come out somewhere around there you can't deliberate too much over the first cut the first cut is just something that you got to do to get out of the way because you're never going to know what you're doing until you cut something and start holding up there and just start doing it so i'm going to give it a cut and get it to come out this way and i'll have to cut it again get another one comes back in here so let's get to it i'm going to cut this one just slightly past the radius of being midway i'll tell you why if i cut it right down the middle then i have two of the same thing it doesn't do me much good if i do it a little bit this way then i got one that's kind of shallow and one that's more extreme and then when i go to mock it up kind of feel out what i'm trying to do then i have different stuff to try and i only cut one piece of pipe pro tip look how prime that is dang it this is just a regular old wood blade regular wood blade if if you haven't figured that out already that's a huge huge thing and something that i learned from jeff jr when he showed me that i was like oh my god this is crazy regular wood blade just does freaking work on aluminum just works so well and that's because aluminum is not ferrous i don't know exactly what ferris means other than that uh it doesn't make sparks whenever you do stuff to it so it has to throw the chips otherwise it just dulls the blade so you need big uh scooping blades to throw the excess and like scoop it away uh whereas steel you want the finer plates to get the tiny pieces this works great any kind of wood blade is going to be what you want to use to cut aluminum stuff so you can see how the mandrel comes through here on the outer part that is still thicker than the straight piece of the old tube now the inside it's thick with two c's because the mandrel squishes it out like on the old tube that broke the apex of a bend was so thin that i could take it and like bend it with my fingers so i knew it was only a matter of time before it broke but it's all i had so now that i got this big stuff we're gonna be all set i have come to accept that i'm gonna need to go to the store and get brake clean because there's none in here so i just want to see where this lands before i go do that i may use the tighter tighter pen to get it out a little more this way because on the old one the bend came just behind this like i could just get a wrench in there and it was cranked up the whole way so kind of i'll probably end up cutting it about here and then wrapping it back in that way this is all it really is cutting holding things up thinking shuffle it around make it happen but uh yeah now we're gonna go to the store and get some brake link fire up old elvis here yeah i like this truck i got brake clean non-chlorinated as it should be because when these these are kind of oily they come out of the mandrel and they still got oil in them so i gotta clean all that off i clean them after i cut them i like to clean them before i cut them then i don't have to do individual pieces and then it's all good ready to go tape sticks better do when i go to muck it up so i got to clean these up and then we'll start you know just i'm not good at explaining this while i do it if i'm being completely honest i don't want to freaking film this i don't it screws up my flow state and this is like an this is like an arc for me with this tube stuff like i put a lot of focus into it so trying to film it and explain what i'm doing it's just i don't want to but i am because i feel like it's important so i'm just doing it bear with me here look how awesome this is i mean this piece is really burned there is this thing right here just mint nothing and you can kind of run around the outside a little bit too like a potato peeler get that off and then it's great and you're not gonna like slice your finger this thing's really not that sharp so i ended up needing to cut another one that was a more extreme bend which isn't really a big deal because now i got this one ready to go for right there actually i may want a little bit more out of this one too so we'll see here yeah i want more i'm a little weird sometimes and i don't really like where this is going it just doesn't feel right to me i mean it's it's fine it's fine but it just just doesn't really just doesn't really get me feeling right so i'm just gonna take this i'm gonna leave it right there and i'm going to start over start over with a new piece and work at it from there and see how that one comes out and probably i'll hit my stride quicker and i will take that one apart and the pieces of that one will end up making up the new one after i get those first couple pieces it's it's so weird i don't my brain is spaghetti but sometimes getting a clean slate helps like that and that's why these pieces are taped together because you're not committed to anything it's just like legos except making your own lego if i don't use them on this side completely then end up on the other side of it and up somewhere else in the exhaust those you know just kind of works itself out kind of getting somewhere here now uh what i'll do to kind of help hold things or keep stuff off of something it shouldn't be touching is i'll put some cardboard in there like whenever i did the headers on shane mcclary's vega i wrapped a bunch of cardboard around the uh the one frame rail and just laid the collector right on it and that's how i mounted it so when i finish everything pull that off then the perfect amount of gap is there that's kind of what i'm doing here too um that was actually a video i did way way way way back that was my first big video the one that kind of like got me monetized so you should go check that one out after this getting that through here going like that finding my pace i like this a lot better and then it's gonna turn in just a little bit more turn down and then money that's why i do it the way i do it getting somewhere this is coming around and sometimes it almost feels like you're cutting a bend that's not even really a bend like let me show you the other side of this that i cut it almost looks like i cut it at a 90 but i didn't but what's hard to process sometimes is that even if you cut a slight bend when you know you got eight inches of pipe coming off of it that ends up being a pretty drastic angle so sometimes less is more when you're making bends and you can't question to make it work right also i am using safety glasses these actually came from a guy that i met at pfi he had some car there and he was like yo i'll send you some of these i'm like all right so i use my safety glasses in here uh that's his thingy he's got like a desert race honda or something i don't know out of my wheelhouse but they work yeah so that's the other side they came off of there i'm trying to minimize bends like tight tight bends on here because the last one is split at a well that was basically at the apex here so if i keep that better it's welded on the thicker parts than a straighter shot less you know heat in the in the corners it's just better less restriction all that stuff so we're coming down here i'm gonna take another piece get it to bound down that way it'll end up if i continue the plane throw it down here somewhere knock it off kick it this way and now i can start farming out of the pieces i already have because this one may do the job well how about that i'm gonna run with that right there so basically gonna go like that i need some more hands for this so i'm gonna get to that [Music] sometimes it's kind of hard to get in there do it this pipe is kind of heavy so it doesn't want to hang off that flange real well where sometimes it'll kind of be a nice tight fit and it'll stay in there or you can tack it i don't recommend that because when it's not tacked you get the pipe made if you need to move it a little bit there's a little bit of room inside the flange where it lifts over where you can kind of you know just dial in just a hair but i got this in here got it marked with my little lines pull it out line the lines up that's what i've been doing this whole time i showed you how to do that already so pull that out line the lines up tape it and then uh and then put it back in there i like to use the clicky sharpies so i don't deal with the caps all the time but i don't have one of those right now and i really like this tape this yellow 3m body shop tape it's like very waxy has good holding power and i don't know why i just i've used all kinds of different kinds like masking tape on here this is my favorite i typically use the thicker stuff on pipe that's this big because it holds better but i don't have any of it right now this is what i got left so we got something going on here basically it's like pretty much done like all the hard work is out of the way since it comes down under here and yeah i have an oil leak um it's been kind of seepy for a while it's just that this is literally probably 2 000 miles of me not cleaning it where typically i'm under here pretty regularly so i wipe it all off but i just stopped caring this is where the old bracket was that broke and it was actually so bent before that i chopped it and re-welded it just to patch it by for something else well then it broke and then it fell that's why it broke because there's nothing supporting it back here add a piece to this but since i'm far enough down now i'm gonna pull this off and tack weld all of it because i'm happy with this this is good i can start again from a new spot here i don't have to keep all this temporary i can solidify that make this my new point a and go from there the other side of the exhaust when i turn the boost up the thrust is so intense that it bent this pipe almost in half look at that i love when i find stuff like that because that means there's power on the table because that's a freaking restriction if i ever saw one and it's just from this pipe getting pushed up by the sheer force of air that comes out of it so not only is it getting blocked there it was blowing right into the crossmember so that's awesome i went 152 miles an hour with this blockage right here like heck yeah and that that's a hodgepodge patch job too this whole exhaust is just patched up city i used to have it go it used to run all the way back to where the control arms are and it kicked out there but i busted my opinion yolk enough times where the drive shaft dinged it so much that i couldn't undent it and i just had to cut it off so when i cut it off i just whipped up these little turndowns out of pieces laying around just so it wouldn't blow like on that stuff and that's just how it stayed because it was fine well then you know it's fine just leave it there then all of a sudden it's not fine then it's causing problems then it's bent in half and your down pipe falls off and it's just a big old freaking disaster and you got to redo the whole thing the right way anyway so i should have done this a long time ago actually funny story i've had this tube to do this since february and i just never did it so yeah i kind of suck but better i'm doing it now that i got youtube rolling you guys can learn something from it than doing it before and it being done and finding the right way i don't know how much tube i have uh i'm supposed to have some more coming but i really want to get the exhaust out back farther and i really really want to try an x-pipe i want to hear what an x-pipe sounds like on this thing i get it to it'll come around the transfer case the x will be kind of right under the yoke and then i want to split with just the longest straight section of pipe i can get to go from the pipe straight no bends at all and just kind of point at the back tires basically we'll pull a page out like the nascar super speedway book here those cars sounded freaking awesome because of the x-pipe and the way that the sound kind of resonates with a really long piece of tube that has no bend obstruction to screw with the sound waves i want to try that on here just this just to see if this thing will wail like a freaking banshee at 8 000 rpm is it it already sounds really cool the way it is but man with that with that long pipe on there and that really projecting it'd be crazy plus having the exhaust by the back tire makes for some freaking epic burnouts i got a clip of how it used to be when i had some nasty burnouts in this thing which i will show right [Music] here now the way that smoke all comes out like really far and just projects like that is a hundred percent due to the fact that the exhaust force is blowing it there a little little trick of the trade if you're building your exhaust and you want to do burnouts that'll make your friends go holy crap that was epic use the exhaust to your advantage firing up the old frontiers magic wave get this thing tacked together because if i left it hang like that too long the tape would separate and i would lose everything because this is the part that i wanted to do on a lift primarily um i got to be off the lift tonight because this is a functioning shop and they do business here so that being said if you're in dfw anywhere around dallas fort worth whatever triple seven performance bring your car here the main part i wanted to do on a lift just for because i'm tall and it's easier to film things for you guys um because what i'll do to tack stuff because i'm by myself all the time i'll just cut a little slice out tack it do the same on the other side that way it doesn't pull apart because when you tack something if you tack it it's going to pull apart on the other side just when it because the byproduct is cooling so that's kind of my little hack around that at the end of this tungsten is all gooped up so i just break it off with some pliers because this thing does a really cool feature it has a cap shaping feature so you can go on here there we go we'll turn that on and it says cap will be formed during next welding start i don't know well you can see that but it's nice and round now pretty freaking cool cronies is on another level with this stuff i was really on the struggle boss here for a minute a couple reasons one the thin tape i have does not hold very well when it gets hot the adhesive loses its strength and it pulls apart still so it doesn't have much holding power as the thick stuff which was kind of hurting me and two this welder has so many more features than i've ever been used to that i forget what it needs to be sometimes like it was just not it wasn't really doing it right and i just like what the heck is going on like i know how to weld so it was something in the settings it was the frequency i've never been able to change the frequency in a welder before my old one just did what it did and this one was set at like 60 hertz which is pretty low after some two seconds of googling i found out that the typical range is like 120 to 200 it's like the you know some welding website whatever so i just put it 120 and boom it was fine see here's the uh the 60 and it's already kind of like stress cracking it just looks like garbage i'm like what the heck is going on here and the 120 is still not great but it actually went together a lot better i'm still figuring this thing out these pipes really aren't that clean and i didn't clean my rod off either where back when i built the escalade in pennsylvania like i was mr sterile everything i cleaned the crap out of everything this is a really important point i want to make here i am not very good at this you might think oh well the s lid looks really good you know that's really good and yeah it does look really good but i'm not very good at this i just try really really hard i give it my best effort well not right now but when i built that that was my best that was my very very best effort and that's why it came out the way it did i didn't just have hasley throw it together and it happened to look like that it's just i did my best on it and that's why it looks that way in order for me to do my best it requires a lot of focus a lot of preparation and a lot of attention which i'm not doing right now because i'm filming this stuff and i'm not in my element i'm not familiar here i've never made anything here before like this so i'm figuring it out we're back there i had my whole set up i made my favorite table like made it the right height i knew where my stuff was it was like the zone and that's where i learned and i'm still learning in order for me to perform at a high level i have to try really really hard to keep pace with somebody who doesn't naturally but most people who do that naturally that's that good have been doing it for 20 years i just started so for me to keep pace with the top level stuff i gotta try that much more yeah now this is all tacked up i'm good i'm gonna get back to getting get this thing go back either clean up my mess get off the list so i'm not in anybody's way i hope you learned something if you hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and there's a lot of you out there who for whatever reason watch my stuff and don't hit the subscribe button i don't know why i find myself reading that sometimes too with other channels that i watch as i see this stuff in the field of time i watch it i'm like oh i'm not even subscribed to this guy let me fix that so fix that if you haven't fixed it already if you don't like my channel and you still watch my stuff then don't subscribe i didn't earn it i want it if i earned it just saying you should go check out the video i did with shane mcillery's headers it's kind of cruddy i filmed it on my phone but it's a real good representation of all this a little bit better than what i just did today so we'll see you over there