Brake pipes

Wow, this was a long time coming... so, on to brake pipes!!

This started well, the balance valve sits quite nicely alongside the master cylinder and is away from anything sensitive. Apart from the pipe bends being tighter than the flaring tool could handle, it was pretty easy to fit these two.

It was the next pipes that were confusing me. The ones above were double flared, a 'female' type pipe ending. But looking at my flexi pipes I could see that these were also female;

I initially thought that I'd gone wrong, so on to the trusted internet I went. There was lots of toing and froing, but eventually I found a 'bubble' flare;

This particular one was made using the AB tools flaring tool. By the way, I can heartily recommend their flaring tool, it does a great job and is very quick. 

So now it's onwards with the rest of the pipes. I'll be clipping them in at appropriate places, running them as required. The small pipes were a confidence boost, I think the longer runs should be a piece of cake. I just need to weld on some support tabs while I go, this isn't an issue as I've already done several long runs. 

I remember a story a while back about people who work on half-completed builds, they said that the chassis welding was often 'ok', but the pipes were done when the enthusiasm was there and so they are generally done to a very high standard. Wiring was the main thing that half-completed kits had trouble with. Fortunately I seem to have done things backwards, I got the wiring looms tidied up before I did the brake pipes!