A Far Out Project Indeed!

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O.K. this has many people stumped and im trying to find a way to make it work,what id like to do is make some custom side pipes for my corvette starting from the primary on the side pipe take four 2"peices of pipe stack 2 on 2 squared with about a quarter inch gap between all of them then TWIST all four into a smooth spiral hopefully that makes sense? i thought of filling the pipe with casting sand or salt capping it so it doesnt bend then get myself a big siezmic drill bit stitch one end of two pipes and slowly heat and rap them all around the bit.The only problem i can see so far is the pipes not being perfectly square like i wanted when slid all in one spiral but still getting the spiral effect.heres a picture of my side pipe..and my car of coarse this may give you a better idea only the pipes on it now will be going on my truck ive got real side pipes for my big block
Reply:Originally Posted by KELLYO.K. this has many people stumped and im trying to find a way to make it work,what id like to do is make some custom side pipes for my corvette starting from the primary on the side pipe take four 2"peices of pipe stack 2 on 2 squared with about a quarter inch gap between all of them then TWIST all four into a smooth spiral hopefully that makes sense? i thought of filling the pipe with casting sand or salt capping it so it doesnt bend then get myself a big siezmic drill bit stitch one end of two pipes and slowly heat and rap them all around the bit.The only problem i can see so far is the pipes not being perfectly square like i wanted when slid all in one spiral but still getting the spiral effect.heres a picture of my side pipe..and my car of coarse this may give you a better idea only the pipes on it now will be going on my truck ive got real side pipes for my big block
Reply:You are gonna have to twist all of the pieces in one unit.  I have twisted a good bit of ornamental steel before. to make them match up and look right cut your pipes long enough to trim the ends, then clamp them in a square and weld the ends together then you will have to fix one end to a heavy table or something while you heat and twist the other end.  Good luck ~JacksonI'm a Lover, Fighter, Wild horse Rider, and a pretty good welding man......
Reply:Interesting proposition, very very interesting indeed.I think I'd take four quarter inch pieces of round bar stock.  Bundle them together and then tack one end.  There is going to be stretch in the twist and and tacking both ends will exaggerate that.Clamp the one end and then using whatever, do the twist until it had what I wanted.  Cut off the tack.  Unwrap the twist.  Verify all the pieces are exactly the same understanding the start and stops are different.The tricky part is figuring out how to bend each piece of the muffler tubing (pipe while easier to bend with a hydraulic bender will hold too much heat too long) in a spiral to duplicate the quarter inch pattern.After all it's easier to bend four pieces exactly the same and put them into a group than it would be to bend them all as a group.It can be done with a Hossfield.  I'm just not sure how smooth it would look with the thin wall tubing.  And one would probably chew up at least six times the footage of the footage of pipe in practicing to get the pattern right.  But the cold hard fact is there is one pattern that needs to replicated over and over in each piece and in total the group.And to be honest, I can see a gate post made with a twist of five two inch (2 3/8" O.D.) schedule forty in my future.  After all, anyone can do a four way. life is good