Fixing my Sterling exhaust

[Laird_Scooby]

Well it's not quite a stock exhaust, it's a custom made duplex twin outlet silencer system. Anyway, the cross-axle pipe was blowing on the T-piece :

 

 

as you can see, i had already patched it with dog food tins and Jubilee clips but even so, there were 2 gaping holes, top and bottom of the Tpiece :

 

[

 

 

After stripping the Jubilee clips and remains of the dog food tins from it, out came the electric glue gun aka the arc welder. After some considerable time waving the welding rods into thin air i ended up with something not terrifically pretty but solid and leak free :

 

 

I'd forgotten how quiet my beast was without that bit leaking and as an added bonus, the power is back!

[hughezee]

Excellent work m8, Retro Rich has been having issues with the Acclaims exhaust, fix one bit then its leaking somewhere else sounds like a leaf blower gone wild between quick fixes   we shall be removing the whole system and re-welding it all 

[Laird_Scooby]

Thanks Stu - if the budget allows, Euro Car Parts list the Bosal exhaust for the Axxlaim at about £200 for all 3 sections

 

Something not possible with mine as it is a little unusual :

 

 

You can just make out the 4 tailpipes - not the best photo in the world but only one i can find just now thanks to a mild dose of arc-eye!

[hughezee]

Looks good Dave, thanks for the heads up with Acclaim Exhaust I've got the BOSAL numbers and each section Euro lists is for a different year hence why they are available they don't fit each other  yes there are two different acclaim exhausts each joining in different locations 

[Cryistic]

Arc eye, very painful from what my old man used to tell me, hope it clears up soon. 

 

I've done a bit of welding in the past, I had a couple of Minis in my late teens and I used to spend the summer chasing the rot across the floor pan.

 

I'm surprised you cant buy mild steel repair sections in T's and Y's, or even split pipes or slip collars, I suppose there is more money in making you buy an entire exhaust

[Laird_Scooby]

Thanks Stu - Online Automotive also list parts for the Acclaim exhaust :

 

http://www.onlineautomotive.co.uk/Products.aspx?ID=MQA5ADcANgAyADYAMgA2ADQAdwBYAEwAbABJACcAWABcAE4AIwAhAFgANwA%3d

 

Might be worth a phone call and a bit of cross-referencing, especially as some of the "old-stock" oil filters they were selling off for the C27 (allegedly) were in fact for the C25 and were the element type rather than the spin-on cartridge type. If none of their bits will do the job then i suppose you'll have to do similar to what i did and make your own sections.

 

Thanks Richie, minces are a bit tender this morning but at least not swollen up and shut like a pair of beef tomatoes stuck on me mush! Had a Volvo 360 GLT donkeys years ago that needed major welding and i ended up like a blind red panda the following day! Very sore and totally disabling and since then i've been very anal about the position of the tea, coffee and sugar canisters

 

You could buy repair sections some time back and although they are still available, they only come in stainless as far as i can see. While the plan is to ultimately have stainless i don't want to have a system cobbled together from bits of prototype, thin-wall mild steel and normal thickness stainless repair sections. The plan is to make a complete stainless section to replace my prototype section i've just welded up but i need to find some hole-saws capable of going through stainless before i do that. The reason being there should be a pair of restrictor discs in the outlets of that section with a 35mm hole in them. Didn't have time to fit them yesterday and it shows in low down torque although the power is definitely back! Maybe when i get a spare hour or two i'll fit them but meanwhile there's a few other jobs needing more urgent attention. Sadly i've not kept on top of things as much as i'd like over the past year and i need to spend a bit more time on silly things that could grow to being major before they do!

[Cryistic]

before you do any welding maybe you should invest in one of these

 

http://welduk.com/product/swp-automatic-electronic-headshield-fixed-shade-11

 

Used one many moons ago while the old man was teaching me to weld, so much easier than the old type, no more positioning the torch, flicking the mask down and welding nowhere near where you want to be !  

 

Cant believe modern adhesives cant provide an exhaust bonding system that does not require welding, it's a pretty specialist application but I would imagine you could sell it at a premium.

[Cryistic]

The plan is to make a complete stainless section to replace my prototype section i've just welded up but i need to find some hole-saws capable of going through stainless before i do that.

 

 

Decent local engineering shop should help with that, might only cost you a few quid to get the holes drilled out, small shops are generally pleased to do some cash in hand work for beer tokens, I've used bridgemans in Wellingborough before and they were excellent and cheap.

[Laird_Scooby]

Already got one of those helmets, or at least an older version of it. The arc eye came about because i'd temporarily flipped it up while setting up the next bit of weld to thin air so i could see what i was doing. Mine has a dark green filter in it when it isn't dark so it's tricky to see the finer points while wearing it.

 

Sadly there are no local engineering shops round here and trying to communicate to the ones that are a bit further afield in engineering terms is like speaking Martian to them.

[Cryistic]

Thats an automatic helmet so its clear until you fire up the metal glue gun, you shouldnt need to flip the helmet up to fix a position.

 

Glad to hear it's easing today though.

[Laird_Scooby]

Thanks, mine is automatic as well but as i say, stays green when not in the "full dark" mode. Also because it hasn't been used for a while the batteries were a little flat so it was slow to respond until it had some charge from the solar cell. That said i used it the other night and it was fine then - perhaps it was the fact there was bright sunshine outside the shed that confused it.

 

Having said all that, i've had mine 10+ years and it was second hand when i got it so i might treat myself to a new one, especially as i have to weld my tracking gauges up.

 

Just gone mad and bought one of these :

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B008F16ANW/ref=ox_ya_os_product_refresh_T1

 

If you compare it to the one you linked to, i'm pretty sure they're near enough the same but at a more "wallet-friendly" price on Amazon. Took a while to find as many of them come from Hong Kong and i didn't want to wait 3 months to use it!

The old one will still come in handy for the occasional time when i need a second one