- Our budget E36 rally car has come a relatively long way
in a relatively short period of time.
It's a fun, durable, reliable car
that we can beat up off-road, and it seems to enjoy it.
The problem is it doesn't sound anywhere near as fun
as it is.
So today, I think it's time to change that.
I'm Zach, and this is "Money Pit."
Let's make a little noise!
(heavy hip-hop music)
Big old thanks to eBay Motors for sponsoring today's video.
What's that?
You really think I'm gonna tell you
how trustworthy eBay Motors is?
You really think I'm gonna say
how they make it easy to buy and sell cars and parts
in a secure, online shopping environment?
Yeah, okay. Okay.
As if.
As if I'm gonna stand here and tell you
that they have a Vehicle Protection Program
on cars that are purchased that are less than 10 years old.
As if I'm gonna tell you that
that guarantees that the car that you bought
is the exact one that you're getting.
I don't really gotta stand here and tell you all that.
No way, not happenin'.
Next thing, you know,
you're gonna expect me to tell you
to go shop with confidence
by hitting the link in the description below.
It's not happening. I'm not gonna say it.
I'm not gonna tell you,
so let's just get back to "Money Pit," okay?
(mellow digital music)
So yeah,
we're gonna be putting an exhaust on the E36 today.
Now of course, I could just go buy an off the shelf exhaust,
but that just seems too easy.
And of course,
we've already installed just an exhaust on the Miata.
Get outta here.
So today, we gotta step it up a notch.
So I'm gonna try to make my own exhaust for the E36.
And I think it's gonna be pretty tricky,
but before we get into all that,
we gotta take the stock exhaust off
and look at the thing that we're trying to replicate.
(engine revving)
(easygoing hip-hop music)
Here she is, the stock cat-back from our E36.
And by golly,
there is absolutely nothing wrong with this thing.
The only problem I have with it
is that it makes things a little bit too quiet.
I'm gonna try to replicate this thing
with some materials that I've purchased
so that it will basically do the same job,
but do it just a little bit louder.
So without any further ado,
let's go look at all the materials I bought,
and what we have to try to replicate this.
All right.
Here's what we got.
We got a Borla muffler, a Pro XS muffler,
with dual 2 1/4-inch inlet and outlet,
2 1/4-inch stainless steel.
This is a 304 Class stainless steel tubing.
And of course, we've got a couple exhaust tips.
These were 50 bucks.
This was 140,
and these were 50 bucks apiece.
With odds and ends,
there's probably another 30 to $40
in exhaust clamps and reducers.
So let's call it 350 bucks.
Now, that's all predicated on having access to a welder,
which I do have.
So it's a big reason that I'm doing this.
I mean, I spent the money on a welder,
so I might as well try to save money
on projects like making an exhaust.
That's kinda why we're doing this.
I think this is a really good project to hone a skill with.
Shut the hell up.
Tryin' to weld over here.
All right, so now that we know what materials we have,
let's take a look at the tools we're gonna use,
and how the heck do you use them?
Here's our welder. I love this thing.
I bought it because it does everything.
It does MIG welding and TIG welding.
What we're gonna be doing today is DC TIG welding,
direct current for our stainless steel.
First off, to control your arc, you've got your TIG torch.
This is the TIG torch.
This is a pretty nice one.
It's got a bendable head,
which is very handy for getting in certain spots,
and sticking out of the front of it is our electrode.
This is made mostly out of tungsten.
So this is our tungsten electrode.
And this is what the electricity travels through,
and eventually, it makes an arc
between the tip of the tungsten and your workpiece,
whatever you're welding.
So having this clean and sharp is very important.
And then from there,
our right hand is managing our torch distance,
and our angle, and moving along.
And our left hand is responsible
for adding the filler material into that weld
as we move along.
And then, you also gotta use your right foot.
It's like we're drumming.
I wonder if drummers are inherently better TIG welders,
'cause they're kind of already doin'...
(glass shatters)
See?
Basically, when you crank this thing full down,
you'll be using as much amperage
as you've got set on your machine.
So there's a lot going on here.
It's really not super easy,
but as long as you start to understand
what each thing is responsible for doing,
I think we'll be able to get some decent welds,
hopefully by the end of the day.
(mellow hip-hop music)
All right, so I've got my practice pieces cut,
and now I'm about ready to weld 'em,
but really important thing to gettin' a good weld,
no matter what kind of welding you're doing,
is to clean whatever you're welding really well.
So I'm gonna hose this down with brake cleaner,
then I'm gonna hit it on the belt sander,
and then we'll clean it up one last time.
Okay, so I'm about ready to tack this thing up.
I've got one side held by my little pointy thing.
And then the other side I'm just gonna hold by hand.
So basically what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna start the arc,
say on this right piece,
and I'll kinda walk it back and forth as I plow,
pedal into it.
So I'm gonna start out, basically pedal all the way down,
and this should be really quick,
and I'll start on one side, move to the other side,
and probably back and forth a couple of times very slightly
just to get the two sides to melt, and melt together.
(mellow hip-hop music)
And there we've got a nice little tack,
took no time at all, just a quick start the arc
and then cross the bridge, and we're tacked up.
So now I can rotate this thing,
get it tacked all the way around,
and then we can really go to town
with some welding and filler rod.
I'm basically gonna be working like this.
I'll start a puddle, just like I did that tack,
maybe get a little bit bigger,
and then dab my filler rod, and move right along.
Puddle, dab, puddle, dab,
puddle, dab, and ideally,
you want to move as fast as you can
with as much heat as possible.
What you're supposed to do,
if you're welding something hollow like tubing,
like an exhaust, and you really want good welds
is to back purge.
So basically, you'll cap off the ends
of whatever you're welding with rubber plugs.
And then you'll run a line of gas
from a separate tank of gas inside of the tubing
so that everything in here is filled with argon,
and that'll make your welds really nice.
And you know what?
I should have those, and I'll get 'em someday.
But today I don't have 'em.
And for this exhaust, I think that's just gonna be fine.
The insides may look a little gross.
Don't look at the insides.
Cue the practice montage, baby.
Yeah, this is where I get my six pack abs in the movie.
(funky electronic music)
Well, practice complete.
I got two pieces of metal stuck together.
Are these welds great? No.
Overall, not a fantastic weld,
but that is two pieces of metal stuck together,
and those welds will be good enough to make an exhaust.
And hopefully by the end of the exhaust,
my welds will look noticeably better.
So now it's time to actually go to the car
and start wrapping my head around what we're gonna do here.
Well, by golly,
I think we're gonna go with straight pipes.
Not only is this muffler definitely on the limit
of how big it could possibly be
and still sorta fit in here,
without having the bend that the factory muffler has,
I can't get both ends to go where I want 'em to go.
So we're just gonna go with straight pipes.
And I think that's fine. It's a race car.
It'll sound cool.
(heavy hip-hop music)
All right, we've reached the point of no return.
I'm gonna cut up our stock exhaust
so that I can reuse these flanges.
Then I will weld onto this end my own new tubing.
So without further ado, let's make a little cut or two.
Ready?
(groovy indie music)
Square 'em up on the sander,
and then these are ready to get welded to.
(funky indie music)
So this will bolt up to the car as it did originally.
And it used to have a muffler hanging off of this back end,
but we cut that off.
So then it'll go to this to adapt up to my new 2 1/4 pipe,
and then straight pipe all the way back with this stuff,
all the way to the tips.
So we gotta get this on here to make that adaption.
Then we can stick these back in the car
and determine what we need to do next with our 2 1/4.
We're off to the races.
(funky hip-hop music)
Okay, so now the moment of truth is upon us.
I have to weld this to that with this, and this,
and my foot.
But we practiced once.
So let's just go ahead and keep our expectations very low.
(funky hip-hop music)
Well, by golly, we did some TIG welding,
and it doesn't look that bad.
I mean, I could stand to get better in a lot of areas,
but better than I was expecting.
And that is a win in my opinion.
Now we gotta put these back on the car
and make some decisions
on how far we need to bring piping out,
what kind of bends we're gonna need to make.
(rhythmic indie music)
And we're back, and we got a new shirt.
(man whistles)
- New shirt alert.
(laughs) That's stupid.
(lively '80s music)
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♪ At Bean's Beans ♪
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That's a little art history joke for you.
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Give it the beans, and get one today.
- All right, so we need to go from here to back there,
and it shouldn't be too hard.
I do think I want to take a little angle off of these
just to make sure we clear the control arm.
I've got my digital angle finder.
We'll call it eight degrees, I suppose.
So I need to make a little eight degree turn here,
and I think it should be pretty easy.
We'll make some cuts with the band saw,
put some things together,
and we should be able to make
just a slight little turn here.
Let's head over to the band saw.
Okay, so we need to make an eight degree turn
on our exhaust.
I'm gonna make a four degree cut,
and then I'll use the two pieces that I cut
to make an eight degree turn.
It might sound a little bit confusing,
but as we go, I think it'll make a lot of sense.
So we've got our degree markers here.
We want an eight degree turn,
so I'm gonna make a four degree cut.
(mellow hip-hop music)
Okay, so we've made a couple of cuts
to accomplish the eight degree bend that we needed.
And like I was saying before,
we're gonna cut that eight degrees in half
and make a four degree cut
in order to make our eight degree bend.
So to show you what I meant by that, here's what we have.
Basically, we had the square face here,
and then we made this four degree cut,
and then we made another square cut back here.
So four degree cut, you know, as it was when we cut it,
it's still straight.
But when you rotate these 180 degrees to each other,
those four degree cuts stack up
and leave you with a total of eight degrees of bend.
So we got four degrees here,
four degrees here, total of eight degrees.
So this will weld to our adapter on the car,
and then we can weld straight tubing off this
as far as we can, until we get to our next bend.
I made two of 'em.
I'm gonna tack these together
and then get 'em situated in the car,
get 'em tacked in place, and then we're really running.
Okay, I'm just gonna draw a line from the bend with Sharpie
onto the part that's bolted to the car,
just to mark, you know,
how I want to orient it once I get it off the car.
(easygoing R&B music)
All right, so we've got our adapters in place
with our eight degree bends,
and things are looking pretty decent.
So now I need to figure out how far
I want to take the next piece
until we're gonna get to our next bend.
So I'm just kinda holding this up, eyeballin' it.
I got a tape measure out,
and it looks like I'm gonna want to come out
probably to about here.
And then we'll start turning up around the sway bar,
and kinda up into this pocket just a little bit.
And then we can turn again, and come straight out,
about 13 inches.
(easygoing R&B music)
Oh, yeah.
Oh, it looks like the pieces I just cut are gonna work out.
So I'm gonna take these off, tack them in place,
then probably put 'em back up,
and work on the next bend.
(heavy hip-hop music)
(whip snapping)
And we are back.
I broke the band saw blade last night.
Stainless is kind of hard on blades.
So I got a new one this morning, and we're back in action.
I needed two 30 degree bends, so I made 'em.
I cut two 7 1/2 degree cuts, and flipped those around.
So we've got 15 degrees here,
15 degrees here, for a total of 30, and I did it twice.
So now I need to go take these under the car,
hold 'em in place, get 'em just how I want 'em,
and then mark that
so I can take things out of the car and tack 'em together
and get 'em welded up.
Fact is, there's just a lot of cutting,
a lot of time consuming parts,
but honestly, I kind of enjoy it.
If we didn't have to get an episode done,
it would be even more fun,
because I could sit around in a shop
and let a band saw run all day.
I've been getting a lot of time on the TIG welder,
and I'm feeling pretty good with it.
So let's get these put in place, and move on.
Like that.
So next we do need two straights
that are gonna come up here,
and then they'll turn,
we'll make another bend here,
and then two more straights out the back.
So what I need to figure out now
is how long my next straights need to be,
and I'm thinking about 16 inches.
I'm gonna start by cutting the inside at 16,
and hold that up, get a look at it,
and then we'll cut the next one.
Okay, now we need two 35-ish degree bends
to turn the exhaust towards the exit of the bumper.
We're getting close to the end.
We've got most of the welding left,
but only a few cuts left, and that's exciting.
(funky electronic music)
(groovy electronic music)
Not bad.
The most important part.
We've gotta make these somewhat pretty.
And I think we'll be able to do it.
I've gotten a few that I'm not altogether too unhappy with.
Moment of truth.
Well, golly, that's an exhaust
coming right out the back of the car.
Now we just need to figure out how to hang it up.
So I've made an exhaust hanger.
This is gonna go right under here,
and it's gonna use the stock exhaust hanger points.
I'll bring the welder over here,
and weld this straight to the pipes
so two will become one.
And then we'll probably add another piece of stainless
just to join them together and make it strong.
(heavy electronic music)
Well, hot dog.
We got some straight pipes on an E36.
It only took four full days, but I did it.
I made it, and I would really like to hear it right now,
but unfortunately it's kinda late.
We've got neighbors.
So we're gonna wait until tomorrow.
It is tomorrow.
The car's still in the air,
but it's time to fire this thing up for the first time
and see what this thing sounds like.
Hopefully it sounds good.
(lively hip-hop music)
It's gonna be loud, though.
(engine rumbling)
(engine revving)
(heavy hip-hop music)
(metal slamming)
(heavy hip-hop music)
(engine revving)
(Zach laughs)
(funky R&B music)
All right, well I'll be the first one to admit
that it is maybe a little bit obnoxious,
but it doesn't sound altogether too bad.
(exhaust bleating)
It's definitely rowdy,
which, hell, for a race car,
especially an off-road race car, I'm into it.
Now, the question is whether or not all this time and effort
was worth saving 4 or 5, 600 bucks on an exhaust.
I would say that it's worth it, because to me,
this wasn't about the exhaust.
To me, this was about the skill that we learned
making the exhaust.
(groovy soul music)
I think it was worth it,
and I'm pretty pleased with how things turned out,
and I hope you guys had a good time watching.
I hope you learned a thing or two about TIG welding,
at least the basics.
You know, we'll revisit it again in the future
as we keep getting better and better at this stuff.
Go follow me on Instagram, @ZachJobe,
and follow Donut, @DonutMedia while you're over there.
I'll see you guys next Wednesday.
(engine revs) (Zach laughs)