And I thought stripping a cylinder head for re painting was fun!
The steel fuel pipe that can be seen on the rear right hand side (right hand foreground) & is mounted by welding at it’s for & aft attachment points has cracked at it’s front weld (seemingly more than once).
As it’s encased within the monocoque structure we’re looking to hit upon a fix that will be ultra reliable.
Our theory as to it’s failure is engine vibration being directly transmitted to it (I suppose it’s possible that it was just a poor weld initially & that subsequent repairs didn’t improve things greatly).
Anyway, thoughts so far are:
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re weld a one piece pipe back in and place a damping sleeve over it
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replace with a two piece pipe with a flexible joiner
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(on the “what if” spectrum) re weld a one piece pipe in with some droppers from the top rail of the skeleton attached to it.
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I’m open to anyone’s thoughts on any of the above as well as additional ideas!!!
Cheers James
I think I would use a bulkhead compression fitting for connecting thin wall tubing through a thin wall bulkhead.
The fitting has a compression fitting each end and the middle is threaded for clamping to the bulkhead using nuts and washers on each side.
Swagelock are the type of fittings I am familiar with but there are others similar.
coleparmer.com/buy/category/ … on-fitting
I think trying welding in this situation will always crack with vibration
cheers
Rohan
Welding in a repair section into top rail today.
Blasted the skeleton this afternoon. Primer tomorrow.
That’s a project and a half and coming along nicely. Do those all end up being bucked aluminum aircraft rivets or Cherry rivets?
You have to love clecos!
We’ve got Cherry rivets on hand, but are mostly using some blind Rivets from another manufacturer as they resemble the originals closely.
We’re loving our 200 skin pins something fierce. Took delivery of 70 screw up ones today to compliment the Clecos.
Headed back tonight to chromate prime the skeleton. Plan to rivet tub back together Saturday morning.
what did you end up doing about the fuel line ?
cheers
Rohan
Silver soldered a short section in between the two “forward” bulkheads, put a “floating” Teflon hose in the long section to the rear ( the area that’s been prone to cracking) & a very short section of the original pipe exiting at the rear.
