Plumbing The Depts

This week I’ve been drawing up a cold intake system fed from a NACA duct on the bonnet, there’s been a couple of iterations, mostly foiled by bits of the car getting in the way, but I think I now have a plan that will work. But I'm not going to show any pictures of it just yet.

Today’s efforts centred around finishing off the idler pulley bracket & fitting the top & bottom hose, the first of these jobs was just making up a small bracket to hold the lower foot in place, the second involved shortening some of the pipes & hoses & re-beading the pipes. When I first built the car I had some very thin wall aircraft pipe which I cut into appropriate corners but I needed them beaded - to stop the hoses blowing off. Beading them properly in the garage was a non-starter & getting them done professionally was fraught with risk as the aluminium is VERY thin & VERY heat treated, so would probably just crack. But I applied my brain & when I took it apart I was very pleased (not to mention relieved) to find my beads still in place & working perfectly.

So how did I do it? I bought some cotton string (cotton because it's absorbent), cleaned up the end of the pipe with coarse sand paper to "key" it, the superglued one end of the string to the pipe, wrapped it closely round twice & superglued the other end. Next I made up some araldite & built up a "hump" around the string, cured it in the cooker (shhhh) & sanded it smooth, then one more coat of araldide to get a good finish & waterproof the string, another light sand & it's done. Next job is to make up some brackets to hold it all in place. In this close up picture the lower bead is the old one that's done four years & 3000 miles, the upper one is a new one half finished. This bit of pipe was part of a larger one but I sawed it off to make a hose joiner.

Scoff if you must, but it's free & it works!