Designing and building a lightbar for Toyota Rav4

We put a lot of miles on the Mint Design Rav4, and not always in the best weather conditions.  It was time for a lighting upgrade.

3D model.

The design allows the two CNC cut plates to be linked together and then bolted to clamp onto the crash bar.

Wired up and one step closer…

And installed!

Stainless Steel midpipe section

We received a box with all the pieces required to build TIG weld this stainless steel midpipe.  When you have a customer that provides parts with excellent fit-up it makes welding a breeze!  All the pieces had index marks and were numbered so we knew what order to weld these pieces up and how they were orientated to each other.  This midpipe is backpurged and TIG welded, we also used some Kapton tape to reduce wasting backpurge gas and to ensure no air was being brought inside the tubing.

We used some scrap rectangular tubing as spacers to keep everything nice and straight during the tacking process.

The midpipe is now ready for welding. Kapton tape is the best for sealing up tacked joints, it leaves no residue when removed, can withstand 400°C and makes anything stainless look like something from NASA.  This allows for the use of less argon during backpurging which ultimately saves the customer money.  Here we have all the joints taped up, and the argon is flowing inside the tubing to provide an inert atmosphere to protect the inside of the weld.  After  a few minutes we begin welding.

Some of the first beads.  The welds look good on the outside, but also look just as good on the inside.

Welding in the O2 bung.

The stainless steel midpipe is completely done and ready to be packaged and sent back to our customer.  Anything with a nice surface finish we wrap up with extra care in order to reduce the chances of any stray scratches.  Repurposing towels works great for protecting the metalwork while in transit to the customer (along with shredded paper filler material).

2.5″ dual exhaust construction

Here we’re working on a super clean Pontiac Sunbird building a stainless steel 2.5″ dual exhaust system that splits over the rear axle.  This 2.5″ dual exhaust system is 100% TIG welded and backpurged to allow for the highest quality welds.

The customer wanted to reuse the exhaust tips so one down one to go, cleaning up and polishing the old tips that have their share of scratches and road grime.  We used the Baldor polisher with a sisal wheel with black emery compound for a rough cut, then a spiral sewn wheel with brown tripoli compound for a final cut.  Take a look at our polishing services offered here for more info.

Here’s the backpurge setup running, one flow meter (grey hose) is for the TIG the other (green hose) is for backpurging the inside of the exhaust prior to welding.

Here’s the Mint Design backpurge jig knocked off the CNC table. It can bolt up to begin backpurging any 2.5″ exhaust system, or at least systems with the same bolt pattern. We’ll be cutting a set of flanges to allow backpurge from 2″ up to 4″ exhaust flanges.

The old muffler hangers were not the best, we ended up removing them off the car, so here are the new ones to be welded to the car. They are solid 1/2″ 304SS rod welded to a steel plate with 309 filler.  the 309  filler allows for stainless steel to be welded to mild steel.  The purpose for the mild steel base flange is that it’ll be MIG welded back onto the steel body of the car.

Here’s the entire 2.5″ dual exhaust system completed.

Donating plasma time for a good friend

When we’re not working we try to get down to Cabo San Lucas when possible.  We have one good friend down there, Javier, who runs a very small restaurant called Gordo Lele’s.  He’s been very good to us and we were donating plasma cutting time to cut some souvenirs for him to sell.  All the profits were his and he sold, about $200 worth of bottle cap openers in three days, not bad for Mexico!

3D model.

Here are some cheap prototypes cut out of 3/16″ mild steel to get an idea of what they will look like and feel like.  We also did one with some engraving to see how it’d look.

After a few tweaks (we radiused some edges as they were quite sharp) based off the prototypes the final 304 stainless steel pieces are ready to be wrapped and brought to Javier!

At Mint Design we are fortunate to have so many loyal customers and we try to give back where we can.  Javier is one of those people that we just want to see succeed and this gift to him was a very good surprise.  These pieces were fairly easy to make, as we could knock out hundreds of these in an hour, the only problem is that it’s heavy, and taking a lot of one type of item in your carry on to Mexico might not be the best idea.  So we figured a dozen pieces will be a nice surprise and we told Javier that he should keep one for himself!

R32 Skyline Ø4″ exhaust system

What’s not to love about twin turbo and the AWD drivetrain of the Nissan R32 Skyline?  Here we are building a 304 stainless steel exhaust system that will allow this R32 Skyline to exhale with ease.  Here are some progress shots of a twin 3″ merging to a 4″ exhaust system.

Using a paper template to coping the stainless steel tubing with the plasma cutter.

And after about 35′ of welding this is what is left (sans muffler).

Might not look like much, but the bracket was cut on the CNC table. Quicker and easier than doing it by hand.

The seal of approval (ACE Engineering’s previous logo).

Lightly polished SS tip welded onto the muffler

All done and mounted.  Notice the subtle V-band guards cut out on the CNC table.  Due to the nature of this exhaust system it sits quite low, so to mitigate any damage from speed bumps or anything snagging the V-band clamps, the guards prevent it from getting snagged and cause expensive damage.