Flare Time – Part Deux
So I got my new flaring tool and boy is it nice, makes a perfect 45º inverted flare every time. It’s a really nice pro tool and lives up to what everyone online said about it. It makes a perfect flare every time. Only problem is, turns out stainless is really hard to flare and every flare I tried on the stainless tubing resulted in a crack in the flare. To make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong I used the same procedure on the regular steel lines and had a perfect result. So after much trial and error as you can see in the pic below and that’s only half of the bad ones. So perfect flares, no broken tool but still a cracked line. Hmmmmm what to do. Off to Google I go and after some digging I found a tip that suggests slightly heat the...
Flare time or maybe not
Well this weekend I was looking forward to finally getting to start to run the fuel and brake lines. Most of the stuff I need has arrived, fittings, tubing, adapters and the flaring tool. I already have a flaring tool but since I’m running Stainless Steel lines I needed a tool that was able to handle the harder stainless lines. To make things more complicated there are really 2 main options when it comes to flares. There is the double inverted 45° flares which you will find on just about every production vehicle. And then there is the 37º AN type flare, you will find these on aircraft and in the car world they are the red and blue fittings used with stainless steel braided hoses that you see on many hotrods. The pic below is an example. For the trivia buffs...
Drill, Drill, Drill……………..And then Drill some more.
This last weekend and over the Labor Day Weekend it was all about getting the majority of the panels fitted. This included the driver side footboxes, passenger side footboxes and about all of the panels in the cockpit. It involved lots of fitting to ensure alignment, marking holes for rivets and then drilling and more drilling and more drilling and I think you get the point. Fortunately, Destinée was there to lend a hand and we got it mostly done. As for the number of holes we drilled we lost count somewhere after 500 holes. Some of the holes secure the panel to another panel while some connect to the frame. None of them are actually riveted at this point but just held in place with the Cleco’s to help with alignment. The panels visible in the engine...
Recent Comments