Some common sense stuff to make your life much easier when dealing with these hoses. I thought i'd share because I have worked with this stuff a lot lately in order to make my daily driver actually reliable and leak free.

This method does not use more than common tools around.

TRY TRY TRY to use the same brand hose as fittings, I have broken out the dial caliper and found that yes, this stuff can vary as can the insides of the fittings. You usually find this out on a holiday weekend such as Easter when you have access to limited resources and require something runnning again by Monday. Mr. Gasket, Earls, Aeroquip, etc. It is not 100% the same! Some may be easier to get into others, some chamfering may allow a good fit, and certainly good enough for anything fuel, coolant or oil related. I would not trust mismatched hose and ends for hydraulic clutch or brake lines. This is some real pressure here. A few thousandths will make your life hell putting this stuff together, so instead of saving 15$, consider that 15$ the cost of not spending hours and wasting hose/dremel consumables. A few thousandths may end your life if you dick around on your hydraulics with mismatched bits.

Mr Gasket brand fittings are undersized at the internal diameter vs a lot of other brands, again I broke out the dial caliper and compared them to Aeroquip Russel and others. All this was done on -6, since I have a bunch of that around now, and quite a few fittings.

Things to do and tools needed when cutting this stuff:

Good dust mask, and eye protection 100% required. Do you want stainless wire fragments in your eye? No Beavis, do not be a dumbass. This is serious shit, you have a fiber wheel rotating at 10k or so shooting stainless steel wire fragments at you. Wear a thick sweater and thick pants, I also reccomend good gloves that are kevlar reinforced, such as occunomix or something like that that police use to prevent junkie needle sticks. Your hands will thank you for spending that 25$ or so. A dial caliper is good as well to measure your sanity and show you no you are not nuts, these are not 100% the same. I just measured a .005 difference between a Mr Gasket end and a good aeroquip end. Your mileage may vary. I measured another Mr Gasket end yesterday that was a little bit different, variance and cheapness.


1. Use a VERY high quality sticky electrical tape, and wrap it evenly and VERY tight as well as precisely straight when you wrap an area to be cut. I typically go about 3-4mm thick and you can still see the stainless flex pattern through all the tape with how tight it is wrapped.

2. Use a dremel tool with a fiber reinforced cut off wheel. DO NOT cut through the entire rubber hose, you heat up the rubber and it breaks the slight bond it has with the stainless steel flex. Hold the hose straight with your left hand and the dremel with your right hand, at a slight angle like so

______ \ <--- crude representation of wheel vs hose

this way you sort of chamer the ends, so that the hose does not fray as much when it does, because it will fray some no matter what.

I do this on my lap because it is easy to control and get perfect. let the dremel go at the front side of the hose facing your abdomen, and let it walk up lightly. Once you get near through the steel, walk it up more to create a good groove before you go all the way through. Rotate the hose and repeat along your tape line. Remember you start cutting the rubber to long, it heats up and the fraying is much worse once the tape comes off ruining effort and work.

Once you slice through the stainless mesh, use a knife or sharp razor to cut through the rubber. Different lining, YMMV again.


3. Remove the tape, and again, take the dremel at that angle and chamfer the mesh again, because now you will see slight ends that can make your life hell. All it takes is a few of these not jiving with you and you are peeling it back, and starting at square 1 making yet another cut on this hose and wasting more tape.

Rotate the hose around and inspect closely, be that anal. Make sure it is 100% flat and flush also. Use the dremel to touch it up if need be. Your life or someone elses life may depend on this hose on a track, so treat it as such. Do not be "That Guy" ™


4. Install the nut over the hose end. Lubricate the stainless end with a little bit of whatever the hose will carry, or if you are gross like me just use spit, it's enough to allow the stainless mesh to slip a little. Whatever works here and is not damaging, or incompatible with the fluid you will carry. As you go to slip it in while holding the nut in your left hand compress the mesh and hose inbetween your fingers to ensure the mesh and hose all get into the nut, and begin to push and twist clockwise. This takes a lot of force. Once this is complete, drizzle a little bit of fluid into the end to lubricate the liner.

4.5 LUBRICATE LUBRICATE LUBRICATE. Yeah, I know, insert sex analogy here, seriously though. Very important.

5. Completing an end. Before screwing it together, dip the end in the fluid of choice, to lubricate it. You will be sorry if you do not, you can split the lining internally and all around just fuck up a nice job you just did on your hoses, and waste money/time.

I skipped lubrication and not only was it hell to tighten basically mangling a connector, and the force to tighten makes that pretty anodized finish not so pretty. Now once I took it apart for inspection after, the hose inside was a mess. Definitely not kosher. Remember, be Gallant not Goofus.



Gallant woo's the ladies, takes them out, respects them and has awesome easy going sexy times. Goofus is aggressive, attempts to slip them roofies and forces himself on "the skirts". There is something about lubrication to be said somewhere in here, I leave it up to you folks to imagine.



Fit an end complete, and tighten that down wherever, then kink/bend and guide your hose to where it needs to be, marking where it has to be cut. Be sure to factor in the depth of your

hose end as well into this marking/measurement of your cut. Mark it, and put the tape behind the cut towards the good end already there, just in case you have to step away and wonder "Son of a bitch, was the tape before or after the cut?"

Not that I have ever done that then spent 2 hours putting a line back in because I was dumb.

Repeat.

Call me insane, I like using good quality teflon tape on the threads of junctions as well, be sure not to let the tape interfere with the angle or seat area of anything, make sure it is ONLY on the threads, to ensure a 100% proper seal against liquids and gasses.



Snapping some pics of the coolant lines I had to redo on my daily. The cheap ATP supplied chinese steel fittings were leaving rust in my coolant bottle, no way Jose. Unacceptable.

Posting them shortly. Everyone likes pretty hose and hardware.

Oh, and even if it SEEMS like it is tight enough, if you can see ANY space between the thin nut on the hose end and the collar, it is NOT tight.

There should be 0 gap, otherwise you have not done this right. Yes it gets super tight at the end, but that is why you have such a safe high pressure leak free line.

Takes work to withstand force. I see a LOT of people running around on lines that are not fully complete and tight.

Back to pics and the rest of this.

Charge pressure source, still a crappy silicone line that expands and degrades easy. Will be -4 soon.



Pretty oil line, and coolant line. Black is A Mr Gasket 45 swivel, fuck that junk. If I have to do it again, aeroquip. Mr Gasket has variances in their tolerances as noted above. Red/blue is russell. 0 leaks or issues with the -10 Russell.





Oil Return. Note the teflon tape. It seals well, the wetness was from a bad pan gasket to oil return flange.


This is what happens when you do not tape good enough and attempt to fit an end. Failure. Also there is a good amount of tape as example.



Who can spot the garbage chinese steel -4 end that is rotting apart very badly and needs to be replaced with a real -4 end?

I mark the place to be cut, then jamb a small piece of rag down the line to the area to be cut. I'm not as anal as you with the cut itself (I use a cut off wheel with a die grinder & tape) then cut through the whole works. A pair of needle nose pliers pulls out the rag and you minimize the debris in the line.....even then I flush out the line with solvent poured onto a white rag till a new rag stays clean, then blow it out with air......that I'm anal about.
I use a light weight machine oil for fitting/line lube.
Teflon tape & fuel systems do not mix. BTDT & picked little bits of the crap outta' my idle jets for a couple months.
I settled on Aeroquip. Tried Russel but I didn't like it as much.
Gud write up.

Thanks. That means a bit coming from a meticulous finnicky person such as yourself

I agree, I usually blow the lines out, nothing like little tiny stainless steel wire ends in your oil system, or fuel system.

I tried cutting through the entire thing, but it seems to cause more fray which really irritates me.

I like the dissection method. Seems to result in an all around easier experience for me.

If you're in the LA area, just go to Luky's Hardware in Burbank. She'll make up any braided line, any length, using Aeroquip ends (aluminum or stainless). All the local race and airplane guys that don't want to mess with making up hoses use her. Great selection of surplus hardware too.

Andys

Nice write-up. I used a mixture of bits but it all came out nicely. I got a set of those aluminum soft vice jaws and some proper AN wrenches which really made a difference in not marring up the bits and not cutting up my hands as much.

+1 on the safety glasses when cutting braided hose!

I've been using mostly Aeroquip hose and fittings for my project, but sometimes have to go with an Earls part for NPT adapters - Earls has a larger variety of aluminum NPT fittings.
One other thing I noted was that Earls and Aeroquip cut their NPT threads slightly different (I think Earls is slightly larger?) - in other words one will thread down into a female fitting further than the other. This might help get you out of a jam if a fitting is tapped a hair too deep?

Favorite assembly lube - vaseline. I also use that on the threads of the fittings.

I saw a great video on assembling AN hoses, but darned if I can't find it now!

Jeff

Now I found it. Earls specific, but the guy sure makes it look easy!

http://www.anplumbing.com/tech.html

Jeff

I do want a soft jaw vise as well as proper wrenches. I think for the 914 I will try and spring. For my daily, eh looks are 100% secondary, function and reliability/safety are primary.

I do seem to find some stuff in only Earls hardware as well. Oh well I guess you can not win it all.