Ok so I already had a manifold crack with only 8k mi. I hd it replaced by greddy and now I have the one on the opposite side crack as well.

Does anyone make a tubular manifold for this kit???

Cast iron sucks

 

cast iron is the way to roll for reliability. i think greddy has had a problem with some core shift or something in their castings. they are aware of the problem, i am not sure if they made adjustments to their castings or not.

 

what do you mean "as far as reliability"?
I went to talk to Geo @ Titan when my manifold cracked and he was surprised it cracked at only 8k mi. He said they don't usually crack until 60k mi or so. So abviously its not strange that they crack.

I got a local shop that can fabricate them but I'm sure it will come with a heafty price.

 

Cast handles the heat cycles much better than any tubular manifold will. SS tubular are much more prone to cracking than a cast manifold is.

 

I'll take my chances with tubular.

 

Just don't think for a second, you are gaining any more "reliability" by going with a tubular setup.

 

Exactly. "most" fabricated manifolds eventually crack. That said, if you use the BEST materials, and proper, certified welding techniques, they should not crack under any circumstances. The challenge is finding a fabricator that is skilled in this process, and that will stand behind his work. 8 gauge SS tubing, 1/2 inch SS flanges, meticulous preparation and fitting, back-gassing tig welds should hold up to anything you can throw at it.

Unfortunately, very few shops are any good at this. And quality fabrication and welding is expensive....as are the materials.

Which brings us right back to cast manifolds.

Unless I was building a custom turbo setup, I would stick to the out-of-the-box casting. You probably just got a bad batch, or maybe the studs were trqed a little funny.

 

or the car was tuned lean ^

 

nah, the car has never had a tune other than the one preinstalled in the emanage blue and the manifolds were torqued down to greddy's specifications.

 

if someoneis going to fab a tubular manifold, make sure they use a thick wall stainless or inconel tubing. there are a few places that sell schedule 10 SS tubing now.

 

Got any names of places that do?

 

you could find the tubing itself easily. but finding someone with the correct dies for a mandrel bender (and willing to do only a few bends) will be the tough part. inconel would be crazy expensive, and even tougher to find someone capable of welding it correctly.
the trick is making zero-gap fitments so you are welding the material together and adding filler, rather than using just filler to span the gap. then brace the turbo or manifold back to the block. back-gassing is good also, but you would spend crazy money to have someone do that on every weld on custom manifolds.
good luck which ever way ya go.

 

sorry, I haven't check this thread in awhile.

talk to vibrant performance. Titan is a dealer for them, I think. vibrant manufactures all kind of trick stuff.

 

the other place to look for exotic piping is www.burnsstainless.com while, in their website, take a look at their merge collectors! That is what a collector is supposed to look like!!!

 

call full race!

 

I checked all three sites you guys suggested. However, all of them seem to just facricate joints and such. I wish someone would just sell the manifold.

My car has been mysteriously overheating over the past few days and after checking the sparkplugs, I found that I have a tiny bit of coolant seeping into the cylinders so I'll be retorquing the heads tomorrow. If this doesn't fix the problem, I will have to replace the headgaskets and I'll possibly find both manifolds cracked due to hyper cooling from the coolant intursion. If this is the case, I'll probably have the shop fabricate new tubular manifolds. We'll see how it goes.