Just asking not trying to start any arguments...........
Would it not be better to use some form of pipe bender rather than all that welding?? would have made a smoother route through the inside of the exhaust for the gas to flow freely??
kc
Leaving the fluid dynamics aside for a minute, it should not matter for the gas to flow inside a segment welded tube or a bend - both are perfectly acceptable and widely used in motorsport.
"Segments" (or pie cuts as they are commonly referred to) are chopped off a straight section of pipe at a desired angle (e.g. 4.5 or 7.5 degrees from the centre line, 10 or 6 cuts form a 90 degree bend) and do not require any special equipment other than chopsaw or a vertical bandsaw. Which is why they are a popular choice for any small scale, custom or one-off work. Another advantage of pie cuts is due to the complete freedom of angle and width choice, they can be made to form some of the tightest of bends - something that requires an investment in the bend forming tooling to achieve the same results.
A mandrel bent pipe is the next one up from pie cuts but more often than not the choice of bend radii available to fabricators is not great, with tight 1D bends (when centreline radius equals pipes diameter) being the hardest to form without tearing the pipe (outer radius wall ends up doing a much bigger sweep than inner wall and stretches thinner). Bent sections are great for repeatability as they save a lot of time compared to the pie cut making. As mentioned above, SS bends are available off the shelf these days so long as you're not going crazy tight and have to wing it with the cuts!
Lastly, arguably the best of all are the CAD-designed and CNC bent [sections of the] exhaust that are formed out of a single straight piece of pipe using the mega expensive industrial benders (£300k+). Typically only the high end shops and OEM exhaust manufacturers will have that as the equipment and tooling costs are astronomical for your regular high street shop to justify.
In the real world though a combination of the above two gets you by. A good fabricator, worth their salt, will these days follow the correct welding procedures (prepping, cleaning, purging, passivating etc) and hand make it to the "OE" standards.
tl;dr: Nothing wrong with either. Read the god damn post above.
If the OP's exhaust has not been purge welded it will most likely fail , particularly in high stress areas.
If it wasn't purged it will have oxidized quite badly inside and wont last long
Why are we to assume that the exhaust has not been purged? One simply does not weld titanium unpurged. The desired finish for titanium welds is silver with light and dark straw acceptable as well. Do you see any different in the OP's pictures?
Wait for the drive by. It really sounds great under load..........I love it
And you should. Enjoy!
