Yup, turbo the 7a. I’m going to be building him a setup to bolt onto the 7a and MS the car. Just turn him loose and go have fun till it pops. We have a VGC 7a bottom end at the machine shop that I’m going to build a forged motor for him eventually. I plug away at his projects here and there when I’m not tied up in other stuff or waiting for things to come in.
For 304 there’s nothing wrong with Vibrant material other than the damn price you pay for what you’re getting. They charge more than necessary for the material, but at least you get something that’s halfway decent. The do make good mufflers though. Can’t go worng with them there(that’s a Vibrant muffler on JVG’s exhaust up there)
Most places don’t use liquid cooled setups because they either a) don’t require the duty cycle at high amperage or b) don’t require the really small torches. I require both on a regular basis.
I didn’t build that liquid system on the Lincoln. It’s just my original Procon pump from 1995 that was on my large miller 475 at the time that I adapted to the p-tig(machine was originally air cooled) I just made a much larger 18 gallon coolant reservoir on top of the machine to try the system out w/o using a radiator. Seems to be working fine even during summer temps. Coolant didn’t even hit 85F on those oppressively hot days we had. On my dynasty I have a coolmate system(internal radiator, closed loop liquid), and on the larger miller I have a direct pump that’s tapped into city water, open loop. Water just dumps down the drain(it’s clean/non contaminated) That machine even with water cooling it gets HOT when cranking it(max 460amps) on the aluminum. Probably going to retire that one soon, and I’m probably going to sell the lincoln as well as I want to buy another dynasty(375 maybe this time). Get down to two machines. I don’t do as much structural welding anymore to require the big machine.