House move plans dragging, so while I am stumped for big stuff, I thought I would go back to a few of those jobs I put on the back burner. Like the exhaust on My F2.
Half of it was scrap. I had some corrosion around hte collector, but the rear pipe was total scrap. Huge hole blown out just behind where it joined, and paper thin metal all along the underside that I could push around while it made crunchy sounds. Baffles were shot too, and not really attached. The front section, however, is actually surprisingly good.
Quite a bit of surface rust on the collector...which I have been cleaning off...but it is really pretty solid. Will need some welding where the pipe went into the joint gasket, as moisture clearly got trapped and rotted out the steel...but only where the gasket sat. Should be an easy job to weld in some fresh steel there...
The pipes themselves have some surface spotting, but no dents and just a couple of scratches/scrapes...none of which are deep. Should clean up...then I guess it sould be possible to re-chrome.
BUT....here's the thing.
I cannot get the 2 removable header pipes to shift. 2 are welded into the collector...but 2 are seperate. The clamps came off really nicely with a squirt of WD40, but they were not rusted up.
If I am going to get them refinished....the pipes have got to come apart? I can see a gasket in there ( or what looks like one) but if it's fossilized like the other one....it's going to be a pain to get loose. The one I did remove was easy ( relatively) as the metal around it was scrap and I could cut it away then break off the gasket bit by bit. Cant do that here. Heat also seems to do nothing, as the gasket was designed to cope with high temps, and the metals are exapnding at the same rate.
Any hints or tips?
