True - there are grades of stainless that are magnetic

Many exhausts that fail the magnet test may have flanges made out of very exotic materials

Others my be made of mild steel and chrome plated

 

Al, there are cheaper ways to cut SS flange, plasma or water jet!

look at my "quality" greddy ti flange, they are paper thin...Zeus had to goop them with silicone sealant....so what?

 

Stainless steel is in no manner harder to cut than many other metals Use a grinder or a sawzall if ya want

And just for the hell of it 309 stainless is much better for exhaust anyways. 409 is very common stainless used on exhausts... most manufactures use it because its much cheaper than most and needs to pass tests to ensure it will not fail within 10 years. These are about as exotic as your kitchen spoon

 

Man why all the fuss about exhausts? You guys have some great products, but people are going to choose what they choose because of the performance of YOUR parts, not the fact that you prove your parts are better then the rest.

You don't have to spoon feed your customers IMO. The numbers speak so much louder then any words you can write.

 

I think somebody should make an exhaust out of 440A Surgical Stainless Steel

 

Well since your only here to educate I'll help out.

If your laser cutting flanges anyways then its just as easy to laser cut a stainless flange as it is regular steel. Its not harder per say just that the material is more expensive. Stainless is not a big deal to work with as long as you don't get it hot. Get it hot and your not going anywhere. A real metal worker knows this and uses the proper machines to cut stainess. I cut my own flanges at work for my exhaust, bov, and throttle body flange out of 400 series stainless. Bandsaw, oil, and a holesaw. When you weld stainless flanges they tend to warp more than regular steel. Sometimes you need to surface your part to achieve a flush fitment. This may or may not matter on an exhaust. The real problem with exhaust, and people who work on their own cars know this, is not the flanges themselves. It is the bolts and specifically where the bolt meets the nut. Most cars out of warranty will require you to grind off the nut to get the bolt free. Therefore if I was going to drop the money for something in my exhaust I'd be dropping it on brass or stainless hardware.

 

My AMS exhaust = Full stainless flanges
Perrin exhaust = Full stainless flanges

1. There are plenty of FULL 304SS exhausts out there.

2. Failing "the magnet test" doesn't mean the exhaust won't perform well......

 

The magnet test doesn't exactly apply to 304 SS. 304 SS is usually weakly magnetic because its nickel content is a little low (I won't get into the details.) As other people have said, even a steel that is strongly attracted to a magnet isn't necessarily a non-stainless steel. If the exhaust is already on the car, a better way to assess whether its stainless is simply to see how much rust there is. Mild steel will start rusting away pretty badly within a year or so, esp if the car is driven in the winter. A 400 series stainless steel will rust, but never badly. It will appear more as a uniform surface layer. 300 series will hardly rust at all.

 

Yes - there are many great made in usa units that are full stainless


If however, a china made exhaust promoted itself as being "full 304 stainless steel constsuction" and had 7 flanges that were not made of 304 stainless steel - that might be something that people may be interested to know ?

 

very good info, so which exhaust is true to its word so far, its going to be AMS i know it lol

 

when you find one of these so called ebay exhausts without stainless flanges take lots of pics... I have yet to see of the stuff you keep on raving on about.

 

My thoughts:

Is this a good way to see if your exhaust is full stainless? Absolutely

Does being a true full stainless design make the exhaust worth more money? Absolutely

Should everyone be concerned about possibly not having stainless flanges? Not really.

It's a great way to justify extra expense for full stainless systems, and it's a good way for people who have already invested in full stainless systems to continue to be proud of their purchase... but I doubt this thread will make very many "eBay" or non-full stainless system owners feel bad about their purchase. In the end, differences such as this are in a gray area that people will hop to the side that best suits the decisions they've made. In other words, people who own a full stainless will be likely to praise this as a great reason to own one... people who don't will discredit it's benefit.

+1 to DynoFlash for bringing this test to our opinion, I don't see how people can be mad at him for simply finding a way to test a flange for it's construction!

 

You guys have got to seriously be kidding me. Al has listed MORE than just our exhaust in this thread of ones he tested that are full stainless with stainless flanges LEARN TO READ.

It is a great test to see what you got for your money. What is wrong with it? Rather than hating on myself, Al or any other vendor that is proud of his product why not just look at what the results are? This started from an exhaust that was in our shop last week, advertised as full 304 stainless and was in FACT NOT. It has chrome plated mild steel flanges on it. End of story. I can buy a flange like that for $1.50. That is a long way from the up to $35 cost for our SS flanges.

Also, for the genius's in this thread. If you really did spend anytime at all doing all this machining, cutting and grinding of stainless that some of you are saying you did you'd know that stainless is a complete pain to do anything with. It will take the teeth off a sawzall blade, it wears abrasive chop saw blades out twice as fast. Forget a standard hole saw cutting through it, it will take the teeth right off of most common hole saws that would normally cut right through mild steel. Some of you are just full of crap over you eye *****. We work with stainless EVERY SINGLE day. To say it cuts just as easy as mild steel is 100% utter bs.

Where the heck do you guys get this crap from? Text books or metal working site on the internet filled with others that don't know crap about actually doing work?

Wow. Everyday it gets worse.

I agree 100% with some of the statement. A 3/8" mild steel flange is going to outlast the exhaust system for 99% of the guys on here. I agree. I personally wouldn't run it on my own car as I HATE HATE HATE any kind of rust.

The point is to justify the costs of producing a high quality part.

Also, 409 grade SS is the most commonly used. 409 grade stainless, to further disprove some of the ignorance posted in this thread, can actually be bent fairly well in a standard non mandrel, press bent common exhaust shop bender. It will not fold over and crush. Put a piece of the same wall thickness 304 grade in the machine and it destroys it. More proof of the workability of the 304 grade, it is difficult to work with. A 409 grade SS will infact rust completely through very similar to what a piece of mild steel does. Most OEM automanufacturers use 409 grade tubing. It is magnetic. 304 grade stainless steel is NON MAGNETIC, it is sold and advertised as such.

I myself worked in a steel mill for 9 years making tubing. My father retired from the same steel mill after 30 years. I skipped college and worked for a living. Bring your text books and I'll bring my tools, we'll have a party cutting some tubing/plate and see how that book works for you.

 

Thanks you but i think i can read, and the flanges were non-magnetic. Also, let me mention that this is dumb test, any ferrous metal that is demagnetized during the manufacturing proess can still be maganetized, and this is simple highschool physics. And to material science, even a ferrous metal that rusts like chromium are nearly non-magnetic, and funny enough high-chromium is part of the SS composition, so technically, any SS is magnetic to some point. And SS is NOT imperivious to rust, it can still oxidize given the right conditions.

 

SO your saying here that your right and all the other engineers around the world that took metiral science is wrong?, let me remind that SS304 has 16% high-chromium which IS MAGNETIC. Also, since u seem so to be the know it all of metal working,why don't you mention the metal in SS that is resistant to corrsion. I'll go ahead and chime in, it's austenitic nickle, which is completely non magnetic, but wait, what are the properties of this metal, i'll tell u, suspetable stress corrosion, and wait, theres even more, this is an exhuast shoiing out about 700-800 degrees right around the hot spots or even hotter which warrants stress, thus this high nickle content of SS304 used for exhausts will oxidize, not as fast as 400 grade but will.