Well my oxygen sensor bungs came in today. Hooray!
But it's too fucking cold to spend all night welding and crawling under my car tonight. Especially since I can't drink to stay warm due to work tomorrow morning. Ergo, exhaust work gets finished on Friday night.
That being said, I needed some gaskets in preps for this. Now I could have bought gaskets like most normal people, but where's the fun in that? Instead I spent $12 on a sheet of reinforced gasket material (thanks Uncle Summit!) and made my own instead! I was able to get three 3-hole gaskets (would have been four, but I dorked one up) and one 4-hole gasket for my exhaust joints and downpipe.
Materials needed:
- one 12"x15" piece of Mr. Gasket steel-reicforced gasket material
- one Sharpie
- some exhaust flanges for templates
- one hole saw kit
- one pair of tin snips
- one box cutter
- one metal step bit
Too easy.
You've seen this. Draw the gaskets out with a Sharpie. Get them fairly close together for minimal material waste.
Like so.
Draw some simple intersection lines with a straight edge to find the center point of the main opening. Mark it with the aforementioned Sharpie. Clamp the bitch down to your work bench and put the appropriate sized hole saw...
...on to the arbor provided and attach it to your electric drill.
You can use a hand powered drill if you like, but it will take you a very long time to cut through the material, you probably won't get a clean cut, and you will more than likely give up before you finish the first gasket. I used a power drill.
Now cut the holes. Ensure you've put a wood backing down so you don't drill a hole through your Workmate. I weld on mine so I really don't care. The wood is just there since the surface is all crappified and uneven.
Hold the drill with one hand and press down on the gasket material with the other. This will prevent the material from twisting and being a general pain in the ass. Wind the drill out to high speed, but don't apply very much pressure - let the hole saw do the work, you'll end up with a cleaner hole.
As you can see, I drilled all the holes for the first batch at one time. If you can't see that, you're a blind moron and should go get your head checked.
Take your step bit and drill the bolt holes out. You can probably use a twist bit, but the holes may not be as clean. Once you've drilled all the holes. Cut the gasket out with your tin snips.
Too easy. It took me 20 minutes to make three gaskets. Like so
And you can see, they're pretty much spot on. Like I said, I had enough material to make five gaskets, but I fucked up the fourth one, so I only have four now. No big deal, I only needed three. Did I save a lot of money here? Well, a decent 3" ID gasket runs about $5 and I could have made 5 of them for $12, for a possible savings of $13. Chump change. But I made them myself and it adds another special Speefoos' touch to my car.
