Stuff to make turbo headers from?

[ausubaru92]

I was working today and saw a guy making a handrail from 2" gal pipe.

He was cutting it, bending it and welding it, but the thing i noticed was that he was bending it with a small portable pipe bender, the ones that have a hydrolylic car jack and the bends were unkrinked and weren't squashed, (like those from an exhaust shop)

 

Anyway,.. can this gal pipe (i think it is cast) be used as a turbo header?

Will it crack, will it melt, will it work?

 

BTW. it was pretty thick walled

[TomRhere]

Water pipe is plain steel that's been rolled and seam-welded, not cast, although some of the fittings are cast. And yeah, it's fairly thick walled stuff, = heavy, may not be good for the flange threads at the heads. Easy to bend, weld what not, but you have to use low-heat when welding it, as it will crystalize and be brittle at the weld if you get it to hot.

As for using the pipe bender to do curves and stuff, it'll give you a 12" radius of arc. That'll work good for the bend at the exhaust ports themselves, not sure on any other bends that you may be needing.

I used 2" EMT (electrical conduit) to make the dual system that was under my "82 BRAT. It's thin-walled like exhaust pipe, welds/braizes easily, and you can get pre-bent curves in 90*, 60*, and 45*, maybe even a 30*. The 90* bends are 12" radius, don't recall what the other bends are actually, but thinking they're 12" also.

On mine, I used one 90* bend each at the exhaust ports, length of straight, muffler and another 90* to exit right in-front of the rear tires, didn't use any cross-connection between the pipes side-to-side. Hardest part of building it was the fit-it-up, mark it, run to the shop to weld it, come back and test fit it, do it again and again, and again for each side. I "need" to get me a welder for the garage!!!