MX-3.com

When looking for someone to weld me up some stainless steel piping, I was told it would cost me 940 dollars..

WTF!

anyone else think the guy is out of his mind?

what did you go to midas or something lol 300 max

yeah, i agree, this guy seems to be a little whacked. maybe $500 at the most and if you do pay the $940, the welds better be perfect at a minimum

Stainless steel is way more expensive than regular steel (about 3 times as much). Factor in bending, labor, etc. I can see that 300 exhaust going up to 900 if you make it stainless.

I can see that 300 exhaust going up to 900 if you make it stainless.

Agreed.. especially if you request mandrel bends and not crush bends. SS exhaust isnt cheap.

Tunes67

I did not think of it like that, but I still think I may go with stainless steel... I won't have to worry about rust or anything that way

Yup...thats stainless steel. I work in a steel shop, and polished 2.5 x .065 stainless tubing is at LEAST double the price of regular ERW steel tubing in the same size.

Welding should be no different though, unless they were using a tig. As for bending, I know stainless is a much harder material than steel. If it was a mandrel bend, it will be more expesive than a crush bend.

Ask them a price for a normal system, and if the difference is about 100-200 than they charge alot for a system..

I got mine put it for 600, and they installed my headers as well. Remember tho, it wasn't stainless, and wasn't mandrel bent.

The other thing about welding S.Steel is that it really needs to be back purged to be done 100% correctly. Most muffler shops use 316 filler which is normally used to join stainless and non-stainless steels together which is one reason why you see rust form at the welds. Without back purging the weld join when you weld stainless steel with the proper filler you get atmospheric chemical (Nitrogen) contamination in the weld bead which makes it brittle and when heated at these joints the stainless alloy adsorbs carbon into the alloy which converts the alloy from a stainless to more reactive steel alloy. What you will usually see if you have nitrogen contamination is sugar like crystals forming on the back side of the weld. To prevent this especially when welding tubing usually the shop will make fixtures to pump low pressure inerts gas inside the pipe behind the joint. Over the course of a complete exhaust system they could use an additional 20-25cu. ft. of shield gas to make the welds. The reason I am aware if this is because for years we had production problems with weld failures on stainless steel. When was only corrected when fixtures were made to back purge the joins on the clamping jigs.

Vanished wrote: I got mine put it for 600, and they installed my headers as well. Remember tho, it wasn't stainless, and wasn't mandrel bent.

yeah I paid $550 for mine and they installed my headers also (as well as modifiying them to fit)... no mandrel bends and it was regular piping...

i know this is old but thought i'd reply. i got a 2inch alluminum piping exhuast from the header back, for $200 so that seems way high to me

since we're on this topic and i actually know first hand with pricing.....exhaust masters wanted $500 for crushed steel exhaust with cat and such...USA muffler wanted about $600. mind you this is for a '91 Geo Metro convertible. so if you have a mufflers 4 less, i'd reccommend that. mendral bent stainless from collector back (muffler resonator cat etc) for $180. so $900 is way crazy to me now.

forgot to mention: the guy bent it all up as he went, no prefab stuff.

I know from my time in a classic resto shop back in the day that good quality custom exhaust work is really worth every penny. SS is harder to weld than aluminum and both the tubing and welding consumables are more expensive. The only guy who did that sort of thing with any quality in Calgary (where I lived at the time) stopped doing custom work because he was losing money at it.