I found a short-term solution for making pies. An engineer buddy of mine said he uses a miter saw that has a carbide wood cutting blade to make pies. Sure enough, the miter box made life easy; however, it can not be used for stainless (I need to wrap up the hot side too).
The 12’ pipe was cut into 4 manageable straights so that I could easily deal with the pipe. I then changed the blade to 9deg, made a few test cuts, marked the size I wanted to cut all the pies and then cut 6’ of pies down.
All the pies needed to be deburred and leveled out after using the miter box. Let me say this… The cuts were pretty dang good so the clean up wasn’t bad. Cleaning up 6’ of pie was mind numbing. I just put my headphones in and listened to music.
Building out the pie path was relatively straight forward after visualizing the path. Making the pies follow that imaginary path is slightly different. Let me rewind a bit. If you notice lines on the tube, I used that to cut the pies. A cut would be made and then the tube would need to be flipped over 180deg. The line going down the pipe would let me know where to flip. Fast forward back to laying out the (imaginary) path. I would use the same lines left on the pies to know how far I was clocking the pies and to line up a smooth radius.
An “X” pipe is needed for my boost setup for one major reason (and I think I’ve said this before, but it will make more sense at this point). The Holley twin intake has no common plenum. Ports 2,4,6,8 and 1,3,5,7 are completely independent of each other which means I need a common point somewhere in the system to balance boost pressure. I cannot have half of my engine receiving extra boost because that makes for some bendy rods. With that said, the driver’s side boost tube was mocked up and then I mocked up the passenger side to mirror. The passenger side was done up 50% until the driver’s side could be tacked up. (This is the end of one night and I went home)
Next day I was at this shop waiting on my buddy to tack the boost tube. During in the wait, I decided to see if I can tack up the new boost tube. The first attempt… I didn’t have the settings correct at all. The TIG was set to DC (WRONG) and the gas was not on (MORE WRONG). Come on man… I was excited and nervous. After remembering my YouTube academics and channeling Rusty’s Zen, I was able to do some tacks on scrap. I called my buddy Dave in (owner of Auto Dynamix) to do the actual tacks. Let’s be honest, I don’t want to re do a section of the pie snake. Best let the pro do it. Dave also required me to hold the pie snake together so it was a 2 person job. Putting heat into the aluminum makes the adhesive on the tape let go.
One last thing.. If you guys actually read this far… The pictures are in order. The last few pictures shows a complete passenger side and then it is tore apart again. That is by design. I took a few pies and then rebuilt the path again. The driver’s side was removed because the boost tubes cross paths so that I can make an “X”. I’m hoping that the passenger side will give the illusion it is independent. I’ve wrote enough for one morning.
If you have any questions let me know. I’d be happy to make up answers and bull$hit on the fly. lol
Edit --
I apologized to Dave in advanced for the time investment to weld my cold side. It's like 34 linear feet of welding. We both agreed it will look amazing when finished though.
