More supplies!  I received my first shipment of plumbing parts from Brown and Miller racing.  These guys make some really nice hose, I'll be using the black hose (high-temp polymer braid) for everything under the hood, and the blue striped hose (polyester braid) will be for the fuel lines or anything running through the frame rails.

Their fittings are beautiful.  These are all crimp-on fittings.  After I get all of the hoses cut and fittings in the right places, I will mail everything back to be permanently crimped together.

I'm really excited about this piece.  Previously I had planned to couple the stainless fuel lines to the flexible hose using the fitting mess shown on top.  Then I discovered the stainless steel weld fittings that BMRS sells, which will allow me to weld the crimp fitting directly to the hard lines.  Now I can permanently couple the flexible section of fuel line (which will be protected and hidden within the frame rails) to the stainless steel section of fuel line (which is exposed).   The overall package is much smaller, easier to package and handle, and looks a lot cleaner.  Plus everything they crimp is fully pressure tested for leaks, and there will be 3 less leak points anyway.

A few weeks back, I posted this picture showing some trouble I had flaring the tubing I purchased from Onlinemetals.com.  I traced it down to a bad batch of tubing - all of the bad flares originated from heat number YT14014 manufactured by the Shanghai Crystal Palace Pipe Co. LTD.  The inner bore of the tubing was really porous and oxidized, which really affects the surface finish of these 37º JIC single flares.

Here are the bad flares from a few weeks ago:

Here is a comparison of acceptable tubing and defective tubing

The defect is a bit more clear in this photo.

I contacted onlinemetals.com customer service, and they were really great (again) about making everything right.  They sent out two more replacement tubes to cover the damaged sections.

Just to be safe, I test-flared both ends of the new tubing.  As expected, the flares were beautiful.

Unfortunately, I have to re-make these two lines.

This weekend, I met up with Dave and Ian for a cruise in our old trucks!  Ian just bought a cool old C20 pickup, this is going to be his workhorse for towing and hauling.

It is considerably more clean than Dave's '67 or my '62.  We considered kicking him out of our shitty old truck club.

Disc brakes! What fancy technology!

We cruised up north to Quaker Steak and Lube for some wings.  Luck was on our side; nothing broke!

We cruised mainly on country roads, passing sweet old barns like this one.