Doh!

[Rambozo]

Had a little exhaust project today. Got the pieces cut and tacked with a mig, then went to check the fit, and damned if the tacks didn't break right off as soon as it touched the ground. I thought that was a little strange. Then I figured out that what I thought was stainless, was really titanium. Doh! Had to do a quick rethink on that, as I had to attach to mild steel further up. Fortunately I had enough pieces to do a slip fit and clamp and bored out a piece of stainless pipe to act as an adapter sleeve. That will teach me to make assumptions. So now this is probably the only turf tractor with a titanium muffler! The OEM one was never very good and a replacement was over $400 from Toro. Got a virtually new take off from a sport bike on ebay for $30. It's all good in the end and it's nice and quiet, now.

[CGCINC]

So there are No dumb questions right....

How do you tell if it's Titanium?

[Rambozo]

So there are No dumb questions right....

How do you tell if it's Titanium?

I'm not sure if there is an official way. I had a good clue that something was amiss when I was grinding on it. I got excessive bright sparks. My old standby has always been to glass bead blast a piece. It will make a shower of white sparks, quite a show. In looking around I stumbled on this from Jody, too.
"1. Using a filler rod other than titanium (like stainless steel or nickel alloy rod). If you weld titanium with anything other than titanium, you will hear the sound of the weld cracking like glass: tink, tink, tink… you can actually break the weld by tapping it lightly with a ball peen and man is it brittle."
I can attest to that. At first I blamed the mig and thought it was some exotic stainless alloy and tried to TIG it with some 308 filler.
http://www.weldingtipsandtricks.com/...-titanium.html

I have some of it left to play around with. Since I do not know the exact alloy, am I right in thinking I can use CP-Ti filler rod and be pretty safe that it will work? This is just to practice on and fool around with, and I don't want to invest in a bunch of high dollar rod.