Exhaust copper tubing as exhaust?

You'll have inspired me. I think a polished copper exhaust may find its way onto the HoughMade '71'
 
I did copper tubing and fittings off my header to my expansion chamber. It needs to be brazed or silver soldered. The guy that did mune didnt weld very good so I wrapped it in header wrap. Hard copper works fine, thicker walled than soft copper....
 
Wow that looks like an interesting little project, did it ever work well to your expectations?

I assume you mean the motor, thanks. Yes, it is a delight to use at only 9# and just a gentle purr for sound. The copper is not brazed. I used SS sheetmetal screws and can't really see any leaks. I was surprised that I can put my hand on the lower part of the exhaust while the upper part gets hot enough to discolor the copper.
 
Yes, I was thinking about using copper for an exhaust too. Sure would be easier to cut, bend and braise this stuff. I wonder if it could be chrome plated?
 
Anneal the copper with a propane torch, pack it solid with sand and bend around something round, like a smooth wood log.

Copper used to be used to plate steel car bumpers before chrome plating.

On my outboard exhaust, it tarnished rather quickly, but light rubbing with 000 steel wool makes it bright again.
 
Sorry for the correction. I meant to say use a compression fitting between copper and steel flange to motor. I thought about making an additional muffler for my HT. DO NOT breath the fumes if you heat copper!!! There's a reason why they don't make pipes for smoking tabacoo out of Copper!!!!
 
ok ive been playing with the idea of making a completley copper expansion chamber and exhaust. however it seems as if that's not going to happen because i would have to sell my first born for some copper sheet. but if your just going to make and exhaust manifold with no expansion chamber then you could use home depot copper with out any issues. you would have to treat it like any other metal tubing when bending however, and you would need to get a piece of copper strap to make the flange to bolt up to the head.

also you could not use solder, solder even the high temp stuff would eventually come apart on a 2 stroke manifold. higher performance 2 stroke exhausts can get to 500c and above. that's enough to melt pretty much any solder. but you can get brazing rod from the home depot and fill with that and be ok. but really ideally you want to actually braze weld, which with copper is probably out of most peoples skill range so filler rod will be fine. you also don't have to use flux if you dont want to.

also i don't know what kind of crack you people have been getting into but why on earth would you want to paint or plate copper? its already a corrosion resistant material that gets a very very nice looking patina to it once its been heated up and cooled and exposed to air for a long time. which would look pretty good on a vintage looker bike.
you can also rapidly speed up the patina and coloration by spraying copper down with a rough mix of

3 ounce Copper Sulfate
1.34 fluid ounces of Tech grade Ammonia
6lbs of Ammonium Sulfate
and 6.5 gallons of water.

spray it on in a fine mist for a few coats letting the mixture dry between coats.
 
I was using a copper header pipe for about 3 months or so. Ghost0 on here used plumbers solder and it melted off after a few weeks, so I brazed mine and had no problems with it what so ever!

Fastboy
 
think this will work
weak point may be
although the solder may not melt
at a certain spot way before melting
I think that it does lose strenth

brazing is pretty darn strong as we know
in welding class years ago we didn't braz copper - why - not sure - maybe just didn't get around to it ?

repair and ride those things
 
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