There's no problem that a homeowner dreads more then when he has to repair the plumbing. In my experience, the problems that require a professional to come out to your house could have been avoided by simply having it installed correctly the first time. This couldn't be more true when dealing with your race car. If you don't plumb the car correctly the first time you could be looking at an expensive repair bill that could have been avoided.
For our asphalt project car we need to plumb the oil, fuel, and water lines. To do so we are going to need 8-, 10-, 12-, and 16-gauge lines with all of the fittings to fit each line. We chose to go with Earl's performance plumbing to showcase a few new products that could make our lives easier when we plumb the car.
Earl's Performance Plumbing...
Earl's Performance Plumbing is a leader in providing the best lines for your application.
For our fuel line we chose to go with Earl's Pro-lite 350 hose because it's extremely durable and will resist crimping. But it's also 50 percent lighter than its normal fuel line. There is always a lot of fuel line in a race car and its weight can add up, if we can save weight here and not compromise the safety of the driver, then we want to take advantage of it.
The fittings we'll be using are Earl's new Ano-Tuff fittings. These fittings use a unique military spec hard-anodized coating that actually penetrates the aluminum for superior wear, corrosion resistance, and resistance to thread gauling. This can be extremely important if you ever have to hook up a fuel line at the track in a hurry.
In our ProCup rulebook, the maximum length of the fuel line is not specified. So you might notice in some of the pictures that our fuel line wraps around the underneath side of our car. In homage to Smokey Yunick, we did that on purpose. The extra full line will allow us to carry more fuel on board, in turn we can go farther on a full tank of gas. A typical race in our series will run 250 laps at a half-mile track. Now we can't make all 250 on one tank of fuel, however, by putting extra fuel line in the car we might be able to extend our fuel mileage to 235 laps. So our strategy would be to pit early in the race, say around lap 15, and get our fuel stop out of the way.
 We have got all our fuel line...  We have got all our fuel line and now we are running it through our firewall to the rear of the vehicle. |  To be able to transport it...  To be able to transport it safely to the fuel cell we have installed this steel tubing that the fuel line passes through that will protect the line from any type of cut or fuel spill inside the driver compartment. |  Now the line has come out...  Now the line has come out at the rear of the vehicle near the rearend. We need to keep the line as high as possible and out of the way of the springs and the travel that the rearend will experience. |
 That should do it, notice...  That should do it, notice how we didn't go directly to the fuel cell area, we did this so that we could just get a little bit more fuel in to our vehicle. By doing so we were able to add close to 4 feet of extra fuel line in the car. |  Now we are into the fuel cell,...  Now we are into the fuel cell, notice how we have gone from the fuel cell into an in-line Peterson fuel filter. Once it passes through the filter the only place left for it to go is the fuel pump. Now we need to attach our fittings on the other side of the firewall and then the fuel line will be finished. |  We have cut our line and blown...  We have cut our line and blown it out extremely well. Earl's has an excellent video online that shows the best way to cut a fuel, water, or oil line. Go to www
.anplumbing.com/installation.html. Any time you cut a fuel, oil, or water line, take an air gun and blow out the hose. This is especially critical for the line that runs between the filter (fuel or oil) and the motor. If you fail to clean the hose you might allow trash to pass through the line. It won't get trapped by the filter because it's on the outlet side. You can see here that we have attached the base of the fuel filter and slid it over the hose. It's a tight fit but to ensure that the fitting isn't pulled away from the hose, wrap some tape around the hose to where it butts up against the fitting's base. When you tighten up the fitting to the base, the tape will show you if the fitting has pulled off the hose. |