handmade manifolds

[dummi]

my mistake

[confusionhunter]

Hi Guys, sorry for the lack of updates… been sitting professional exams and the like…
Anyway, I received the manifolds pretty damn quickly. I did ask the question whether the manifold came from within the UK before I bought them and I didn’t get an answer to that specific question, they just replied that I wouldn’t need to pay taxes?!? Which I thought was odd but I went ahead never the less.

They arrived and they had come from the US and they were duty free as they were marked as experimental diesel manifolds worth 20 dollars! Fair enough! But the delivery was very quick and the packaging was very good, in fact I couldn’t get into the box even with a Stanley knife and scissors! Eventually got them out:



My first impressions were actually pretty good and made some notes that actually didn’t stray from my expectations bar one:
1) the welding up close is in fact as good as it looks in the pics on the ebay pics( more on that)
2) Materials for the flanges are definitely different than the manifold tubes (as expected), I made my previous manifolds out of mild steel as stainless that thick is very hard to work with, The flanges look like they have been plated somehow. Although the surface on the flanges isn’t perfect its certainly up to the job of being a flange!
3) I couldn’t make any judgement on the quality of metals really as to me stainless looks like stainless.
4) This is my surprise…. The manifold wall thickness is thicker than I expected. It seems at least 2mm thick! Which by all accounts is pretty damn beefy. So I take back my comment on how its no surprise a thin walled manifold cracks under the weight of the turbos and manifolds….. they aren’t thin walled at all!
5) The gaskets looked cut from a sheet of gasket material, I’m sure its up to the job but I may use the Audi Items depending on sizes etc. these ones look like I could trim them to perfection though…. Unlike the metal Audi gaskets.
6) The areas for the EGT to go in looked well made and as if they would actually fit J

So I set about getting some second opinions.

My TIG welding genius mate who works at a fabricators: he has made end tanks for ICs for me and intake flanges and the like and his welding is superb and has been in the trade of fabrication for many many years ( although not just automotive), Anyway the upshot is that he could find nothing wrong with the welding and said that the welding was pretty good…. See for your self.

I unfortunately left my decent still camera the other side of town at the workshop so I had to use my old 2 Mega pixel breeze block camera so I apologise for the crap pics.



My welder dude also noted that the brackets had been welded both sides, which is a sign of someone not cutting corners, except one of them that he admitted looked impossible to weld properly anyway because you couldn’t get the torch in there.
We also conducted the magnet test that confirmed that the manifold is indeed stainless ( stainless isn’t magnetic) and the flanges are indeed either steel or a very soft stainless ( apparently some stainless IS magnetic which was news to me!)

in this pic it clearly shows the pants plating or bad surface but that makes no difference to a manifold flange. I did nothing but VHT paint on my previoius manifolds and they are still going strong 5 years down the line.

that’s spots of rain in this pic as it was pissing down outside and I just brought the manifolds into the garage from the house…. As you can see it looks pretty good, cant fault the polishing considering.


I took the manifold to some other friends and to a couple of local VAG meets etc and no one could fault them, especially for the £99 including delivery. However there has to be a reason they are this cheap.

Now…. I would be very proud to be able to manufacture stuff like this and obviously their set up is such they can make these cheaply out of some Taiwanese chap that’s very skilled and happy to do it for a bowl of rice…. But it seems that the inherent problem of the maintainability of S4 manifolds and turbos ( ie they aren’t maintainable at all! Cos you have to take the engine out) made this product a total flop.

Perhaps the brute force and torque of the modded S4 engines are still too much for (IMHO) a decently specced up manifold. ( I mean 2mm stainless pipe is NOT going to crack in a hurry! And the welding as weve heard seems to be up to the job)

That together with rumours of cracking is enough to kill the product. I found NO first hand evidence to suggest they do actually crack, but I did find 3 people who had bought stuff from XS power and while one had niggles in fitting ( one guy bought some 200SX bit he had to modify) they found the products good value for money….

So in conclusion, I’m quite happy to fit them to my project engine and to the next stage of testing, where if they do crack its easy to fix, and I’ve grabbed myself a total bargain. I’m not going to bother modding the manifolds in any way as I discussed strengthening with my welder, but he felt that because of the shape of them any bracing would probably be futile. Actually I’d probably flow the oulet flanges on the inside…. I would consider cutting the head flange into three separate port flanges but I don’t think I’ll bother.

I feel the best thing to do would be brace the turbos to something so the manifold isn’t taking all the stresses of the weight of the exhaust and turbos. So. If these manifold put up with the abuse, then I would consider fitted them to an actual S4, namely my brother in laws one ( my old one) given its me that will need to fix it if it breaks so there won’t be any huge labour charges involved.

After all that, something amusing happened. I got a letter in the post with the real invoice for the 99 quid and an XS power sticker which the slogan made me chuckle a bit….

[DavidT]

Great write up matey, thank you.

Seems like a good advert for the product & I look forward to the test results and to hearing other peoples views.

Dumb question, but how much better are they than standard manifolds ? i.e. what should the power gain be on a 400bhp S4 with a good exhaust for example.

[GrahamS4]

Great write up.

[JonnyX]

Thanks. Very informative.

[s4woody]

go for it..it seems alot of things get slagged off when there a break from tradition but im sure you have satisfied your doubts and have snagged a real bargin..enjoyed the write up big time..well done

[confusionhunter]

Cheers guys! Glad you thought it worthwhile.
DavidT:
I reckon maybe 20bhp? Its impossible to tell, but you never see performance manifold made in the "log" type of manifold the std S4/RS4s have. In fact I think its a pretty shocking manifold design on Audi's part in terms of performance. I guess the rest of the engine is so well done they felt it didnt need better manifolds. I mean... why ask cosworth to devlop RS4 heads and tell them to stick with the pish manifolds? Thats the reason the RS4 exhuast port is smaller than the S4 one for better flow,port matched to the manifolds.! (despite the inlets being HUGE in comparison).
Withour back to back testing its impossible to say and even after I fit them and get the engine running its still impossible to say because of all the other mods!

[MCB]

Superb write up and all the best for your project.

[imolas4uk]

glad i brought them to your attention confusion hunter,hope your project works out,please let us know the outcome.

[ChrisS2]

Nice write up, although as said, there is some controversy over these.

I see you say the brackets have been welded both sides, this isn't always good. The S/S is only 2mm so welding onto 1 side is ok as it should bite into the metal nicely but by welding onto both sides, it can weaken around the welds. Just my 0.02p.

I hope all goes well for the project and will be interested to see how they hold up.

Cheers,

[confusionhunter]

cheers Chris... My welding guy seemed to think welding both sides is much better, also I'll ask at my new course as Ive just paid for some evening classes in welding processes in MIG/TIG and stick and allsorts!! should be fun..!

[okkim]

I read this topic, and got some confidence to those manifolds and thougth that what a hell and bough those also

I will cut the turbo flange and change it to Garrett T03 flange, so I don't have to destroy my other tubular manifolds. I'm planning to put some support to prevent the cracking, which I hope that is not occurring

Thats quite strange that I bought those from UK, and they send them from USA. I hope that I don't get any taxes.

[confusionhunter]

way heaaay, a group test....As long as you understand there are rumours of cracking, and I haven't PROOVED otherwise and you are still aking a risk! Let us know your thoughts on them when you get them too!

[okkim]

Yes I'll take a risk, but the engine pull is normal to me so it doesn't matter

I have some experience of making the manifolds, and [ur=http://valitalo.org/manifold.html]mine [/url]haven't cracked. Let's see how it goes with those.

[AdamS4]

So anyone tested these manifolds yet ?