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Stesso

Mock-up and Fitment

6:32
22:11
32.7K views

At 6:32 in

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

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What happens here

Using yellow 3M body shop tape, the creator tapes together the individual cut and de-burred aluminum pieces. This specialized tape is chosen for its waxy texture and strong holding power, allowing for easy repositioning during the mock-up phase while still providing enough grip to hold the pieces in place. The entire assembly is then held up to the turbo exit point on the vehicle to visualize the routing and fitment. The presenter explains that this iterative process of 'cutting and holding up' is essential for custom fabrication, as it's impossible to know the exact perfect cuts without physically test-fitting. He uses cardboard shims to create consistent gaps between the pipe and other vehicle components, which will be removed after final welding to ensure proper clearance.

Goal: Assemble the downpipe sections using tape for test-fitting and determine optimal routing.

Tools and materials

  • Aluminum Tubing Sections Woolf Aircraft — The cut and cleaned pieces to be assembled
  • Red Sharpie — Marking cut lines and fitment points on the aluminum tubing
  • Cardboard — Creating temporary spacers and shims for proper clearance during mock-up
  • Yellow 3M Body Shop Tape 3M — Temporarily holding pipe sections together for mock-up

What they say

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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

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