The rumors are true, I've joined the big leagues. I've improved my fabrication facilities from third world to second world.
A few months back my auto-darkening welding mask passed away. At that point I used my other welding mask, which was a fixed shade mask. After some hard use the headband on that mask also broke, so I took the opportunity to upgrade to a quality mask. Because I'm a Miller welding equipment loyalist, I bought a variable shade, auto-darkening mask. This offers the benefit of having the ability to use both hands to position the welding gun and parts with my mask down, as well as adjusting the darkness of the lens to compensate for varying arc brightness.
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| A young Darth Vader experiments with SnapChat |
As some of you may know, for the past two years, my primary work bench haas been a wooden kitchen chair. It's served me well and brought me a great deal of mockery from my roommate. Not only did Vaughn talk bad about my workbench, he would belittle my garbage bin which began life as a home depot shopping cart. I guess I gave into peer pressure, because last week I finally broke down and built a real work bench. Using a circular saw with a dull blade and leftover lumber that Vaughn dragged home, I took about two hours and screwed together a 12 foot workbench.
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| My loyal workbench of two years |
That's right, not only did I upgrade from a Namibia-grade workbench to Ukraine-grade, I went to China's finest, Harbor Freight, and bought a vise. I've moved up in the world. I'm not really sure what took me so long. I probably should have done it about two years ago, but as they say, better late than eaten by a bear!
I don't remember if I posted my last attempt at a fuels rail but long story short, it was a fantastic failure. When fitting the bungs to the rail, the gaps were large and several of the bung angles were not right. When I welded the bungs to the rail, the inside diameter bubbled so that the fuel injector o-rings would never seal. That's not a good situation for vehciles that you would like to not be on fire.
I ordered all the materials again and started over, because if it's worth doing, it's wort doing twice or something like that.
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| Bungs, for optimum bung-holes. Heh. Bungholes. |
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| Fuel rail stock |
Most fuel rails are relatively easy to make, because most fuel injectors are positioned perpendicular to the axis of the engine. As you can see in the photos, my fuel injectors are not. In fact, no two of my injectors share a common angle, making this rail construction about as logical as a tax form translated into Japanese and then back to English using google translate. If you've never tried this type of translation, you haven't lived. But really, it's amazing and should be considered a mandatory experience for graduating the tenth grade. Stop what you are doing right now, and try it. Use it to write Christmas cards to your in-laws, or to write a sick note for your kid who is missing school because they barfed up last night's lasagna. Seriously, who knew that kid could contain that much vomit? She's thirty-eight pounds soaking wet, for crying out loud!
In order to get the fuel rail bung angles to match the manifold bung angles, I made some "dummy injectors" that would insert into the manifold injector bungs and protrude straight out from the manifold. This would allow me to fit the rail injector bungs to the rail and achieve a minimal gap for better welds.
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| Dummy injectors made of brass and electrical tape |
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| Dummy injectors installed into manifold injector bungs |
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| Rail injector bungs slid onto dummy injectors |
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| Rail with standoffs bolted in place |
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| Holding rail and standoffs in place for welding |
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| Fitted and ready to weld |
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| Tacked in place |
This time around I decided to let someone who welds for a living weld up my fuel rail. I just tacked it in place and took it to my bearded friend Ben, who then delivered the rail to his coworker. After Ben's coworker made snide comments about my tack welds he welded the rail and I paid him far too much.
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| Welded fuel rail |
Next I turned to the fuel system. Some time last year I made a sump for my fuel tank. After looking at it for nearly a year, I decided that the sump hung too low for comfort and that I would like to shorten it. Out came the DeWalt grinder and I got to work.
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| Original sump depth |
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| New sump floor and inlet and outlet bungs |
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| Stitch welded in place |
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| Lower profile sump |
I had been putting off the sump modification for months because despite the fact that I seem to do every job twice, I don't actually like to. With that out of the way, I could get to work on fabricating fuel lines. I think the fuel system is one of those systems like the endocrine system that you forget about and fail to realize that it's not working until HEY I'M FRIKKIN SEVEN FEET TALL. Fuel systems often get overlooked when you are modifying a modern car, but when you are building a car essentially from scratch you realize just how involved (and ridiculously expensive) a fuel system is.
I chose to use a Bosch 044 fuel pump since it has a flow rate of about 300 liters per hour and is relatively unaffected by high fuel pressures, which is an excellent attribute for heavily turbocharged engines.
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| Most of the parts for a fuel system |
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| Bosch 044 fuel pump with mounting brackets |
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| Fuel pump mounting reinforcements welded to the floorpan under the rear seat |
Bosch 044 mounting location on the Falcon
Fabricating fuel lines turned out to be far more difficult than I had anticipated. My flex lines were made from Fragola 8000 series hoses and fittings. While the -8 assemblies I installed prior to the pump were fairly easy to assemble, the -6 assemblies were near impossible. Consider this to be the definitive Fragola push-lock 8000 series -6 assembly how-to.
Fragola recommends that you heat the hoses with a heat gun or by boiling the hose, after which you lube the fitting and press it into the hose. This is a recommendation is like honey-boo-boo's entire family. It doesn't work. At all. Forget about doing it this way because Fragola has lied to you. There are some other brands of push-lock hose that may work this way, and as I mentioned earlier, the -8 hoses work this way, but don't even waste your time if it's a Fragola -6, you are going to have to make your own tools or buy them if you can find them, though I only know of a tool for installing straight fittings. If you have 90 or 180 degree fittings you are out of luck for buying tools. I'll show how I made mine below.
Instead of paying $72 for the Oetiker hose clamp crimpers I went to China's finest, Harbor Freight, for some $2.95 pliers and with a little masaging from the DeWalt, I was making satisfactory crimps.
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| I'd give ya tree-fitty for this crimper |
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| Acceptable crimps |
After spending half a Saturday attempting to force a -6 fitting into a -6 hose, it was time to quit fooling around and "get a bigger hammer". A quick trip to Home Depot (I generally make three of those on a good Saturday) yielded an assortment of metal jiblets and a C-clamp. Once again, the DeWalt angle grinder came out to play.
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| The problem child |
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| Metal jiblets |
In the pictured above you can see that I stacked two 5/8" nuts on top of each other, and then split them along the axis. I then cut the lower part of the C-clamp off and welded half of the nut assembly in its place, and welded a -6 male fitting to the foot of the clamp screw. The hose is then laid in the welded on nut portion of the clamp and the other half is placed on the other side of the hose. The nut halves are squeezed together in the vise and the fitting which is attached to the male fitting on the clamp screw can then be pressed into the hose by tightening the clamp screw.
For 90 and 180 degree fittings, the same tool is duplicated except in this case, a different attachment is welded to the foot of the clamp screw. This attachment applies force to a lip or shoulder on the fitting in order to insert the fitting into the hose.
With the proper tools, most of which I had to make on my own, I could plumb the remainder of the fuel system. Keeping my goal of easy serviceability in mind, I also built several fuel bulkhead fittings which were welded to the unibody structure to ensure easy installation and retention of fuel lines
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| Main fuel line bulkhead for feed and return |
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| Main bulkhead istalled |
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| Fuel pressure regulator and flex lines installed |
At present the fuel system is finished with the exception of cleaning and tightening the fuel lines and inserting a pipe plug into one end of the fuel rail. As soon as I wire the chassis and engine and complete a quarter million other small tasks, Grace will wake from her twenty four year slumber.
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Bonus image for reaching the end of the post
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| Bonus image #2 for the faithful scrollers |
