Fuel Lines

I have the new fuel lines now, so time to start the fight of getting those installed.  Since the lines already have the fittings installed, they won't fit through the existing holes in the brackets as they run from the fuel selector valve out to the side skin.  As should be expected, opening up the small holes in the four brackets was of course not as easy as just upsizing the hole.  The hole for the fuel line is so close to the hole for the brake line that upsizing would make them overlap.  The fuel lines came with rubber grommets vs the plastic ones, so perfect holes aren't really necessary.  To keep the holes from running into each other, I used a unibit and slowly chewed away at just one side until I had a fairly large hole started and a different center to reference.  It's more oval now, but with the grommet is fine.  In an ideal world I would have just taken the bracket to the drill press and clamped a sacrificial piece onto the part to put a new center in and used that as my guide, but a couple of these brackets are permanently riveted to the spar carry through.

The professionally made lines are beautiful compared to my attempts using the 3003 aluminum.  The main downside is that the extreme bends required to go from the gear weldment out the skin means they don't exit straight out, but point pretty far forward instead (you can see how it's squishing the grommet and not going straight through).  I emailed TS Flightlines to ask if there was anything I needed to be wary of in terms of bend radius.  He said that even though the lines are quite stiff, they'll actually take a lot more of a bend than most people think.  He said over time they will set into a position, so once they are attached to the tank outlet, it'll be fine.

The flexible lines transition to aluminum at the fuel selector valve and fit perfectly.  Before I start the next step of plumbing the boost pump, I need to jump over to installing the brake lines.  Those have to wind around the fuel lines and run up the center on the floor, so I need those done before the boost pump is in place (sets over the top of the brake lines).