03-28-10 Fuel lines, etc.

Fuel Lines, etc.

Made little bits of progress in the evenings after work, doing stuff I could do while staying off my foot for the most part. &@##*%ing gout , damn treatment meds are almost worse than the pain.

Anyway, I took some bar stock I had kicking around and fabbed up a leverage setup for the E-brake following similar approaches from other builders. Not sure I like the stock cables, they seem like they're just too gummed up on the inside, may get some new ones...no telling how old these ones are. The pull effort isn't too bad, and I can adjust the hookup point for the cables downward a notch or too if needed.

With the new battery box, the side-post battery was a no-go, so in goes a top-post Optima. I supposed this means I'll have to start the wiring soon...

I was dreading making the fuel lines because getting the AN fittings onto the braided lines was a major pain that took a ton of tries on my last FFR, until I learned the proper technique. The trick is to make the cut on the stainless braided hose in such a way as to minimize disrupting the braided strands as much as possible, then they stuff into the red collar fairly easily. Some tape around the braid, then cut through the tape, but this wasn't working well. I instead used a cutoff wheel and zipped through the hose as quickly and evenly as possible. From there it was easiest to put the red collar end down on the workbench and apply gentle pressure on the hose end, using a small flat-blade screwdriver to wiggle the loose stainless braid into the collar. Once all the stainless fibers are tucked in, the collar could then be twisted until the hose seats inside it, then the blue fitting could be easily threaded in.

The -6 AN fuel tank ends:

Routed down the rear frame upright and forward, tucked up as high as possible along the main frame rail. I tried to keep the filter fairly accessible rather than trying to place it up above the suspension ahead of the tank itself. The line clamps are vinyl, and I drilled and tapped directly into the frame tubes, from http://www.made4uproducts.com/, they make a lot of nifty line and hose routing clamps and other miscellaneous doo-dads.

I tried to keep sharp bends in the lines to a minimum, don't wanna disrupt the flow of go-juice, even though it could have been neater to do some 90 bends, these tuck up nicely against the firewall. I may come up with some heat-shielding for the lines and/or the headers once they're in place if it looks like they'll be too close. Just have to decide if I'll do the loop in the front of the motor, with a hose to connect the front ends of the fuel rails, or put in a Y-fitting right at the output from the regulator and do a separate line for each fuel rail.

Shouldn't have to mess with any lines underneath the car now, so I went ahead and riveted up the cockpit floors. You can see what looks like a dent along the tranny tunnel side in this shot, that's where one of the tranny tunnel tubes was 'adjusted' on the frame by the original builder. Won't be visible once there's some carpet in place. I've used several different brands of rivets at this point, and by far the best ones so far are the 'ultimate rivets' I got from Breeze. It takes two pulls with the air riveter or 4-5 with a hand riveter, but the way the rivet forms and the stem breaks off leaves the strongest grip of any I've tried. Probably overkill, but whaddyagonnado?

And the passenger floor done, with a patch piece in place from the 'factory' donor e-brake handle location, which is useless if you're buckled in your seat properly.

And the driver seat...still have to patch the donor rear harness passthrough along the tranny tunnel.

Engine should be just about done, hopefully I'll get to pick that up this week sometime...stay tuned.