Two Dollar Weber Fuel Rail.

Here’s a fix if you don?t want to shell out for a set of new weber fuel banjos/unions and fuel pipes.

Look, this probably does not look as good as the famous earls braided hoses and plated banjos, but it cost no more than 2 bucks…
And a nice job to do on a lazy Sunday Arvo.

Two bucks for the copper pipe, recondition the old Banjo gasket faces, use some scrap brass to machine the pipe joining unions and a bit of plumbers solder to hold the bits together… too easy.

After un-sweating the old pipes from the banjo?s, a special expanding mandrel was machined up from a bit of 3/4" mild steel bar.

The mandrel was placed in the three-jaw lathe chuck, each banjo (a sliding fit) is placed onto the mandrel, the cap screw, when tightened, forces the tapered washer into the matched tapered mandrel ID
which expands and holds the banjo tightly and square so that the gasket faces can be machined, each gasket face is machined true; just a very light cut is required to true the faces up.

The brass joining unions were machined and drilled to suit the 5/16" copper pipe. During assembly the Weber’s were used as the jig to set the correct spacing of the banjos (Including new sealing washers).

This project was done on a Sunday afternoon, as you can see in the pic it looks pretty tidy and does not look out of place in the lotus engine bay.
There has been no sign of any weeping/leaking of fuel at any of the gasket faces or the soldered joints.

Enjoy.
Col.


Pretty enough, but you have no compliance in the “rail” between the two carburettors and the soft solder will work harden . . .

Yep, thought about all of that, keeping an eye on things… no sign of problems yet. And bear in mind that the air box metal backing plate the webers are mounted to hold and align the webers, so there is no individual flex between them, (Which could lead to work hardening of the solder joints) the webers actually move in unison. The thackery washers allow carby flex at the manifold flanges.

The elan has covered over two thousand miles so far and all is good. Will keep you posted.

I like it! Thanks for the project.

Greg Z
'72 Sprint