Monday, December 15, 2014

Brake line plumbing

Next it was on to plumbing the brake lines.  3/16" brake line is much easier to bend than the steel fuel line was.  I pretty much stuck to the book on this portion.  Trying to hide the lines as best I could.  Once I had all the hard line bent and connected.  I filled the system and started bleeding the brakes.  No major leaks anywhere, small leaks at the master cylinders went away after tightening the fittings just a bit more.
Brake pedal feels pretty solid for now, but once I take that first test drive I'll know how well I bled the brakes.


Plumbing

With the alignment roughly complete I moved on to the plumbing.  This is one place where I deviated a bit from the plan.  I ended up buying some 3/8" diameter steel hose for the fuel line instead of using the supplied 5/16".  I also -6 PTFE steel braided fuel hose for all the flexible pieces.  Since I wasn't using much of what was supplied, I also had to buy a whole bunch of fittings.  I also decided on an external electric fuel pump (Mr. gasket P95 or 95P).  There really no designated place to mount the fuel pump so I made a bracket, painted it, and bolted it to the frame near the rear end.
Anyway once I found suitable places to mount the fuel filters and fuel pump I started bending the steel tube.  I went through 2 sets of cheap tubing benders from O'reilly before I decide it was just going to be easier to bend by hand.  Luckily I only had to make around 4 bends to get it shaped right.