Yeah I'm surprised the brain trust here is down on Stainless exhaust. I built many custom steel exhausts and its expensive to coat and my experience with the local coater down there in Auburn hasn't been that great durability wise (scratches then rusts). I finally built a full SS exhaust for my rig and was so much happier with the appearance and performance. I constantly change things so I appreciate being able to cut apart the exhaust and re-weld it without having to get it recoated. I do have a flex joint and plenty of very flexible hangers. I must be the really odd man out because I build my turbo headers from steel and my exhaust from SS and haven't had a problem with either and the car has been tracked several times.
Anyway, my question is back to welding SS - I've read many times your welds/metal should be silver or gold colored or at least shiny when done and that gray is bad. Well most of my welds ended up gray - its been a while since I've welded SS so maybe it would work out better now but I'm having a hard time figuring out what I was doing wrong. I think the gray is too much heat ? But I work that pedal up and down and only use enough heat to do the job, obvioulsy if you use too much you blow through and not enough is easy enough to see. This was mostly on 3" exhaust without backpurging, but including many v-band flanges and such where there was no open air backside. TIG welding using .063 stick on .063 wall thickness runnnig pure Argon (or whatever the standard TIG mix is) and probably 65-75 amps at full throttle on my Lincoln square wave.
Any tips on what I'm doing wrong ?
BTW I've never had any SS weld crack although I never grind them down.
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