morning all,

why do you wet exhaust wrap when putting it on the car? is it essential that you do it? can you put the wrap on first and then wet it?

why o why?

HI

Basically so it's expanded while wet. So when dry it's tightly wrapped on and not going to become lose if it dose get wet.

Cheers Matt

Easier to wrap round shapes and it holds better when its wet. The wrap then shrinks when heated and most types go slightly brittle or cure as well. Also cuts down on some of the dust/fibres as you're working on it.

I thought it was more about not breathing in loads of very fine glass fibre. Glass fibre will take on moisture, but it won't suddenly contract a lot when it dries. I just did it dry, with a dust mask on....

Fitted mine dry (wearing a proper dust mask and gloves - went on fine. It has since "baked" and gone slightly stiffer, but still a good tight fit.

One thing I found though - the stainless steel cable tie things supplied with mine were utter crap, just broke before they could be tightened enough. I resorted to stainless steel jubilee clips which are much more secure. With careful positioning you can hide the worm drive part out of sight whilst still being able to access it to tighten.

Fitted mine dry too. No problems either!

I sprayed all the pipes to be wrapped with VHT , dry wrapped then sprayed with VHT to seal all the nasty glass fibres that fly all over if you dont . The stainless ties i used are the ball lock type easy to put on but hell to get off.

Mike

fitted mine dry and it's not very tight at all but has held up... has gone very brittle though so when an area came loose recently I couldnt adjust it at all and had to put new on the whole area.
I too found the clamp things were rubbish and have used stainless lock wire to very good effect.

Another vote for wire rather than jubilee clips. I had to redo a bit of mine, and wired it back on - the hardest thing was getting it really tight without snapping the wire!

thats where a proper pair of wirelocking pliers comes in handy... oh and 16 years of aircraft experience wirelocking everything in sight!

you can usually get the wire nice and tight by making a couple of large 'round the houses' type twists at the end .. very difficult to describe basically you twist like normal but then for the last couple of twists you move the whole pair of pliers in a big circle whilst still twisting... this effectively forces the last twists to appear at the base of the tail and gets things nice and tight...

clear as mud?

Pliers? Pliers are for girls! Use your bare hands and plenty of weetabix!