My 73 914-2.0's HEs are original & now rusted through, so I picked up a pair of good used SSI HE's/exhaust pipes to not have that problem & CO poisoning issues ever again!

My question is - should I leave them shiny, or paint them as per the stock OE mild steel ones, or does it matter in the CW world??

If painted, is it the same flat gray hi-temp paint as used on the mufflers, as seen at the 356 Registry??

They look like this now:
Click to view attachment

Thanx for your input!

Don't paint them!

Leave them alone, though I'd take some steel wool to the ends, just to keep them purty.

When SSI produced these things, they were one of the most significant improvements for a 914. They rarely fail. Most CW's accept them as a proper change.

If you paint them, you'll have to make destructive changes to them, which will hurt them & produce something that doesn't appear stock anyway. Be glad that you have them.

Yep, you can still buy stock ($$$$$$), but it's designed to degrade. So, ...why!
Pat

Thanx Pat - you are THE CW GURU

The pipes are actually somewhat cleaned up from that pic, with wire wheeling by the seller - but that was a small enough pic to post here, as opposed to the later ones.

I'll just clean them up as nice-n-shiney!

No, as a CW you need to put the rusty death exchangers back on. Just roll down the window..

Har...har....Rob I meant vs. the OE crap type!

....and they say we have bad air down here in SoCal, I think the monox is getting to ya up there

So - SC over both Stanford & Cal this year!?

Don't be fooled into thinking those are permanent, as they fail too!

I'd blast them with walnut shells and they'd look new!

..HI TOM, ..polish them up with steel wool, and (eagle) never dull., it,s a chrome bumper polish. And bolt them up.

I agree; walnut blast them clean and then SS polish maybe.
A BIG improvement~

Man Perry, I'd have to eat a ton of walnutz for that!

I'm sure they will eventually fail too, but hopefully not in my lifetime!
...these SS ones will certainly last much longer than the OE mild/carbon steel ones!

Thanx for the tip, I probably have several items to media blast in this process, so I'll have to check locally & see if I can get a multi-item discount!

Ok, Ok - I was trying to be lazy in posting the above pic & avoid having to crop more recent ones down to fit the post limit here, but here ya go - this is actually more representative of what they look like today:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment


So I still have to do the following on these:
1. clean-up around some joints & some re-fossilized oil on some inside areas, maybe including the media blast inside & out to finish it off;
2. then have my new SS exhaust flanges welded in (these are mild steel on there now), & weld one cracked downpipe attachment lug;
3. then reseal any end gaps with the original type hi-temp silicone (per Pat Garvey's prior advice on these SSI's);
4. then finish it off with the Eagle Never Dull (Thanx Murry) or similar "shiny-izer"; and....
5. attach them when the drivetrain is ready to go back in after the body is all sorted out!

Of course, there's still a mess of other stuff to be done to get there!!

Or....you could leave the windows up. With the heat on full blast, and leaking exchangers, you could actually put yourself to "sleep". Remember, these cars have virtually no smog stuff on them. That's why it smells of heavy unburned hydrocarbons when you pass an early "anything" car.

Remember when people used to pull the car in the garage, close the door, leave the car running,....and die. Hard to do with cars these days because the cars are so clean. Oh, you can do it, but ir's going to take a lot more effort and suffering to make it work.
Point here is - live! Get some SSI's & keep them clean.
Pat

Actually, these are about as permanent as you can get, providing the end seasl remain intact. Remember, there are ferrous tubes inside the stainless shells. The seals for these "can" fail, allowing oxidation to enter & take its toll on the exhaust tubes, leading to potential failure.

I, personally, have never seen any SSI's fail, from an interior point of view. The sealants they used for the ends of mine are as new, after more than 30 years.

I'd be curious to know how nut blasting would solve anything, since the only areas of cocern are inside the SS shiekds?
Pat

Pat - sorry to say, you still DIE with CO Poisoning even on new cars as fast as those of yore, since Carbon-Monoxide is not removed by even modern emission controls - and we have the strictest & getting more so out here in CA!

Headaches are the first sign of initial or mild longer CO Poisoning, then & last unconsciousness , but a CO sensor is a better way to tell!

I've got the SSI SS HEs in hand, as shown in the pix in my posts above, & they'll be finished off & go on my 914 when everything is hooked up again!

Cheers All!

"Nut Blasting"!!! Pat - you kill me!

I do have some old oil crust on the inside end of one of the cases that I'll need to clean out, probably from the PO's oil leak seeping into incompletely or improperly attached heater/air tubes. It probably won't require "nut blasting"!

Hey, don't knock "nut blasting", until you've tried it. KMS? Leaves you ......mellow.

Sorry - not into S&M!

I spent 26 years "protecting my nutz from getting blasted playing Rugby!

is KMS??

Again......about touching up that paint chip on your 914 - ever done?

There was a picture on one of the 914 sites showing a set of stainless 914 heat exchangers that were cut open exposing the corroded inner stainless exhaust tubes. Just because it's stainless doesn't mean they can't corrode.

You're correct - nothing lasts forever!

However, I'm not sure that all were built with SS exhaust pipes inside, nor completely out of SS for the entire assembly. The ones you saw could've been regular steel pipes inside.

The set I got used is probably an SSI, according to our resident expert Pat Garvey, but has the end flanges to the muffler of mild steel.

I was told by the seller of these & other folks, that you can test for SS vs. regular steels with a magnet, since the process to make SS causes the metal to lose much of its magnetic properties, and the magnet won't stick as well on SS as it does on regular steel.

...okay now, everyone grab a refrigerator magnet, crawl under your 914s & test them out!!

I'll have to recheck the pipes on mine where they're exposed too!

Some crazy pics in this thread from my experience with failing SSIs a while back:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...ssis++installed



Still though, a great upgrade.

I can onlt speak to the first production run of SSI's. They were/are 100% stainless - tubes & jackets.

I've had them for 34 years. A magnet falls on the floor when touched to any part.

Maybe "nothing lasts forever", but these will outlast me.

Only non-failsafe feature I'm, aware of is the seal(some sort of red "goo") between the ends of the shroud & the tubes. It's a very hard, red sealing material, but has held up perfectly through the years.

Yep, best 914 upgrade there is.

However, I haven't entered a Parade Conours for some time, and don't know for certain how the judges thesedays respond to them.

I equate it the the "approved" reval of hydropneumatic struts on early 911E's, which are an acceptable replacement. When it doesn't work, and is dangerous, it should be regarded as Okeydokey. But, as I said, it's been a few years at a Parade.
Pat

IRRC the magnet drops off the SS HEs I got used recently too in these pix above, & you've said that they're SSIs before too. Only the flanges to the muffler stuck as mild steel, so I got some Engman SS Flanges to put on. I'll also get the red hi-temp silicone to fill in the ends, if in fact there are any gaps after the clean-up process.

I'll ask some of the local PCA CWs out here when I get the chance, but Steve Gaglione had told me before that they're usually/always accepted too.

Good on you Tom!

I stll have the mild steel flanges on mine. They haven't seen more tha 15k miles since installed(~75) & never any wet, so I leave them.
Pat