Project Fuel Injected Turbo FZR250, half

Or that time I unscrewed the fuel can to let it vent in the heat, nipped it back up without thinking and came back to it crushed when I remembered I'd closed the cap whilst it was relaively hot...

 

TIG welding Aluminium is an acquired skill. Satisfying when you do a good weld though. I am certainly a long way from an expert. The main trick is to make sure everything is clean to start with. That initial tack can take some time to master without blowing holes in everything. When I started out, I often found that I wasn't using enough current, for fear that my work was all going to end up in a puddle on the floor. I also found I got better results with a bit more bias towards the cleaning cycle.
Put some pics up of your progress so far.

Peter.

 

Never used anything other than 2.4 tungstens as that is what my torch is set up for.
Mostly use white but have used red when in a rush and too lazy to change tungstens. Doesn't seem to be a big issue at the end of the day. Also when the tungsten getsa hot the colour coding disappears. So when you swap them around you can easly loose track of what type of tungsten you are using.

 

this is what my welding work looks like these days. still not super pretty, but more than adequate.

 

Tube is 100mm with 3mm wall. plate is 9.7mm. Gussets are 6mm. I have to wind up the current on my welder for this. The torch gets bloody hot after a while requiring a few breaks during the process.

 

Mike, going back a ways, the first plenum chamber I made for the blown 500 Kawa was in 2mm alloy.
It was destroyed by the inlet pulsations of the 180 degree twin running at 15psi boost.
Next version was in 1.6mm mild steel - which survived. Incl a couple of heavy backfires on starting which opened the
pressure release/safety valve
If we'd continued with that bike the next step was to get a local to do us a carbon fibre plenum as we were told it would be more resistant to pulsations.
The inlet pulsations in your 180 twin are an order of magnitude smaller than the 500 - but watch for any splitting.

 

what size core is that? i spent many hours tracking down small bar and plate core... eventually found some at a good price, but by then i had already hacked up a cheap extruded one... meh, even OEM ones can be welded to once the (plastic!) tanks are pulled off. just not so easy to shorten...
someone once mentioned industrial epoxy... never tried it!

welding ali is easy yet fiendishly tricky. my main issue is the shakes... hidden, never be seen again? perfect. feature weld, critical? grind it out and leave it for a week until it wants to behave itself... theres no point pushing once it goes wrong!

and the slightest of drafts will cause hours of frustration.

can take a lot of playing with settings. my main gripe with mine is lack of footpedal. but my last one did have a pedal, but rather than limit to what was set on the panel, it would go "full range". not nice at 30A doing paper thin stuff! so, you win some, you lose some...

can get away with ramp/slope times, to a degree. takes practice...

so, no footpedal but i have frequency, clean area width... and clean area depth?
seems mine controls just how much current it delivers on each side of the AC waveform, not just duty cycle...
i like running 110Hz, "A"... low frequency tends to penetrate more but stay in place, high frequency gets rather "fluid" yet shallow... usually 30/70 on the width. havent played with depth enough yet and no-one else seems to have it...

then theres simply sharpening the electrodes!

can weld ali with an old buzzbox stick welder. its scratch start, its hard... but it works? sometimes it seems worth learning to gas weld the stuff... (le-dan!)

other than certain jobs where the extra elements are needed... a rods a rod. some light a bit easier and some deteriorate a bit faster... for most part you wont notice the difference. pushing boundaries, they start to become apparent.
my local shop only sells thoriated and zirconiated anyway.

wha? lanthanium, cerium?
bunnings sells a multipack...

as for pulsations, fatigue, and ali... theres the "oilcan effect" of large flat surfaces... always worth embossing a flat surface for plenum chambers subject to pulsation... hammer/press grooves in, a cross, a circle, whatever... something to shorten any potential tuned length and aid rigidity...

it isnt the thickness that matters, its the high frequency vibrations, the cycles of stress.

anyone else notice FZRs get a harmonic drumming sound on the top of the tank? and wondered why they have that square embossed there?