The Story Behind Powatone Exhaust and Euro

I’ve personally been running Powatone Exhaust since 2019, but Powatone has been around for a lot longer than that, it's been around since 1973 to be exact. Back then William, "Bill" was running the show and his son Ian was the manager. It was a niche business throughout the '70s, and particularly in the 80's Powatone's business was booming! They were the local exhaust parts supplier for the whole Canberra and Queanbeyan area, supplying exhaust parts to all mechanical workshops.

Since our takeover in 2019, Powatone has undergone a few changes. We have expanded our business and added a dedicated European vehicle repair and service centre, servicing BMW, AUDI, VW, Mercedes-Benz, and Skoda.

You see I wasn’t always a fabricator. From an early age I knew what I wanted to be, you see, I loved cars and how they worked. I constantly pulled my toys or watches apart to see how they worked. Admittedly a lot didn’t ever work the same in the early days and my parents stopped buying me expensive toys or watches. Surprisingly enough, after many throwaways I got better at repairing them.

My dad said if I liked pulling things apart and cars so much, I should look at a trade, like mechanical. I started a Pre-Apprenticeship in 1987 as a Boilermaker/ Mechanic which started my passion for Fabrication and cars. I then took a position at Telecom, as an Apprentice mechanic.

In 1991 due to a downturn, Telecom shut its doors and I took a new position in Defence as a mechanic at Moorebank(2Coy), repairing land rovers, trucks, APCs, and tanks. At the time I owned a 1968 Ford Falcon, which I loved to modify and tinker with. This led me to work at a performance shop where I began to build engines and race cars, and became well known for my wheel-standing Falcon at the drags. A very good friend at the time noticed my enthusiasm for building engines and asked if I would like a position at Qantas as a mechanic, I jumped at the chance to work there, and after a while, I applied for a Mechanical Engineering position building turbines and subsequently engines for 747 and 767 Boeing style aircraft.

I worked for Qantas for a number of years, until in 2005, I moved to Canberra. My first position was working for BMW as a Technician, This is where I learned my passion for BMWs. It didn’t take long for me to want to learn more, so I applied for a job at a prominent European repair shop working on all types of European vehicles.

My love for cars led me to purchase an R32 GTR in 2005 which over the years, I modified to become one of the Highest horsepower cars at the prestigious Summernats competition.

My Car came 1st in its class and second highest overall in its first year of entering the Summernats in 2007. It backed up and won again in 2008. In 2009 the rules changed and they allowed open fuel types which I came second in my class using standard pump fuel.

In 2019 I decided that I wanted to fulfill my dream of owning my own successful European vehicle repair and service shop which led me to Powatone. My good friend Roy Lampl, the grandson of the original owner of Powatone wanted to sell up, so I jumped at the chance to own my own business.

My passion for fast cars and BMWs has never stopped, and now our workshop consists of 3 BMW technicians and 2 multi-vehicle technicians, which allows us to Service all types of vehicles, while still specializing in European vehicle, and BMW servicing.

We still have a dedicated fabricator for all the exhaust fab, but expanded to become a One stop Euro and exhaust center.

Below is a picture of the original Powatone building in Collie Street.

We are now located within ONE STOP TYRE on Collie Street.

 Today, Powatone Exhaust has Expanded to new premises back on Collie Street.

We have now combined 2 workshops, making One stop Euro for all our European vehicle repairs, and BMW repairs, with Powatone, still carrying out exhaust work and fabrication.

You can still see my love for cars, by the display cars we have in our new showroom.

At least these days, my parents trust me to be able to get all the parts back together in their car.

Julian Gillian

Owner Powatone

How To Weld Titanium

Titanium is easy to weld, it's similar to stainless steel as it needs to be back purged and similar to aluminium as the oxide layer must be removed before welding. The following is a simple guide to help understand the basics of welding titanium.

Titanium is an exotic metal sort after for its low weight, high strength and corrosion resistant qualities, widely used in marine, military and aerospace applications. Titanium is almost half the weight of stainless steel, more than twice as strong and the melting point of titanium is around 1670 °C compared to stainless steel which is around 1450 °C.

Titanium is a reactive metal, at room temperature titanium reacts with oxygen to form an outer layer of titanium dioxide, this is what gives titanium its sort after corrosion resistance.  This outer oxide layer must be removed before welding as it melts at a far higher temperature than the base metal. The different colours that titanium produces when heated are actually different thickness oxide layers formed when heated titanium reacts with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon. This is done on purpose in some cases, see the example below.

When titanium is welded shielding gas must be used all around the weld to avoid the weld absorbing oxides, becoming contaminated and weakened. Those purples and blues might look pretty but in a weld they are a sign of contamination and a weakened weld. A natural titanium coloured weld is ideal and a sign of little or no contamination. See the example below, in most of the weld the colour is raw titanium with a few purple and blue spots at the end of the welds where the still hot titanium has fallen outside of the shielding cup, the purple and blue are signs of contamination.

Below is a photo of the inside of the same section of titanium where I back purged it with 1 litre per hour (1 LPH) of argon, the welds are clearly contaminated (it's a practice piece so the flow rate was turned right down to save argon), but there was still sufficient inert gas (argon) to stop high levels of contamination where it produces an off white powder, marked in red. These few spots of excessive contamination were made by welding with out back purging.

Steps to take when welding titanium:

• Prepare the titanium for welding

  • Remove the oxide layer (I use a dedicated flap wheel only for cleaning titanium)

  • Wipe down with acetone or thinners

• Maintain sufficient gas coverage

  • Weld with a wide diameter cup

  • Back purge the titanium section being welded

-Roy Lampl

Holden VE/VF V8 Commodore System Focus

The Holden VE and VF SS Commodore is one of the most common vehicles we work on, we have a lot of knowledge about what works well, why it works well and what combination of products to use to achieve a specific result.

The first question I always ask customers is how loud they want it and how much drone they can put up with. The louder you want your exhaust system to be, the more it will drone. It isn't that straight forward though, any model with AFM, being where the engine only runs on 4 cylinders while cursing will drone a lot worse. Then you have the differences in body types and how that effects drone, sedans will drone the least, wagons are worse and then ute's drone the worst because of the smaller cabin. Particularly if they have a hard cover on the tray as it acts like an amplification chamber. Besides this everyone will have a different sensitivity to drone, exhaust drone doesn't phase some people at all, while others can be highly sensitive to it.

There are two packages we generally offer for the VE/VF V8 Commodores; a cat back sports systems or a full system package. The full system is generally made up of Pacemaker extractors, our own 100cpi stainless steel hi-flow cats and usually an X-Force cat back system.

For a cat back system we usually recommend a twin 2.5" or a twin 3"  X-Force cat back system. I recommend twin 2.5" for a more subtle note with less drone and then twin 3" for a louder, meaner note. Naturally twin 3" comes with more drone. While there is some speculation around just how well X-Force systems fit, we have found them to be the most reliable and best value for money cat back bolt on systems on the market.

For a full system depending on how low the vehicle is we recommend Pacemaker try-y extractors for a lowered vehicle as the extractors sit higher and give better ground clearance. If the vehicle isn't too low we always recommend Pacemaker 4 into 1 competition extractors with our own 100 cpi stainless steel hi-flow cats and the choice of X-Force twin 2.5" or twin 3" cat back sports system. We're very competitively priced and these full package deals are quite affordable.

We have done a few wild and unique system combinations. For a very good customer of ours, with a very nice blacked out VE SS sedan we fitted ceramic coated Pacemaker extractors with our 100 cpi hi-flow cats and our own hand made full stainless steel twin 3" sports system with black powder coated quad 3" tips. This particular customer had lowered his commodore a lot. As a result it was scraping badly and the bolt on twin 3" cat back system wasn't as high as it could have been, so we hand made a twin 3" stainless system with maximum ground clearance in mind.

-Roy Lampl