oil lines & age

[Peter Pleitner]

Hi Whitworth Heads,

Been deluged by messages lately, both from this group and my
Giulietta/Giulia group, hard to keep up.

Dean makes a valuable contribution. Follow his advise. Short heavy copper
lines under stress and vibration will quickly work harden, hence become
brittle. My lines are still stock and original, but recent traffic worries
me.

I will pass along a lesson I learned many years ago (ok to some of you the
time went by in a flash). During about seven years of my college life I
worked at a restoration shop. The owner of a Silver Ghost I was restoring
taught me to anneal all copper lines. He was Leonard Pole, founder and CEO
of Air Products Corp. Seems he learned this lesson well designing his
equipment during WWII. I believe I annealed my oil lines around 1980, but
didn't finish the TC until 1992. You have to apply a lot of heat quickly to
dry lines, or the silver solder will run out of the banjo fittings. Heat
the middle section of the line to cheery red before it softens the ends, or
attach heat sinks, then immediately immerse it in water. The quenching
softens the copper a lot and impedes fatigue cracking. Possibly this should
be done every 30k or 60K miles, as the vibration will work harden the copper
again at some point. Possibly someone else on this list has some
metallurgical background to contribute to this subject.

As to age, my TC 5168 is approximately half a year older than I am. When I
was twelve or thirteen a neighbor was restoring his TC (received new as
graduation present). He also had a 3.5 liter Jaguar DHC. Was seriously
smitten by the hobby ever since. But my father wouldn't let me get anything
with wood in the body, nor a high revving engine. My compromise was a TR-3
at 16, traded for my stamp collection (I think proving that the same engine
was used in forklifts did the trick). Got my abandoned TC (bush growing
through the floor boards) about a quarter century ago, still in school,
restoring the dash at my desk and storing it under my bed.

Cheers, Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Dean Jensen [mailto:djensen@accessus.net]
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 9:32 AM
To: tabc-forever
Subject: [mg-tabc] oil lines


To all

I still believe that what will keep a "new" line from breaking is not to
twist it.
If it does not line up, which it probably will not, heat one or both ends,
so that
the silver solder will melt and turn the end so that it is in line with the
hole for
the bolt, The lines are bent in a "S" shape or similar, you can make the
"S"
bigger or smaller, but do not twist it to make it fit, do not force it, even
a little
bit to get it to line up with the hole, bend the "S" before you put the bolt
in, do
not let the bolt pull the line to the connection.

Dean