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After seeking advice from
several sources (Caterham and the
7's list) I felt
confident that I could fit the various brake pipes to the
car. The rears where the hardest as you had to take a
straight piece of copper pipe and bend it appropriately to
fit. After a number of measures and a bit of thought I
started the bending procedure, the critical bit being that
you do not put any really tight kinks into it that could
cause a blockage or even worse a leak.
There are special tools to do
this however I used an old coffee jar held tightly in a work
bench. So I carefully bent the tube to fit. A word of
warning that is stated in the build manual is that the
threads at the end of each pipe are different so make sure
you are bending the correct end. I put on the right pipe
first and quickly added a Z bend to take it out of the t
junction and onto the top of the de-dion tube. To aid in
getting the bend s correct I then attached it to the t pipe.
Then with a lot of bending effort I put the required bends
in and finally connected it up to the calliper, and then tie
wrapped down.
The
manual is not clear as to where you should route the pipe.
The correct place is for it to come along the top of de-dion
tube then go between the damper and the bracket that holds
the trailing arm, it should then go under the trailing arm
and then up into the calliper. I had to create a
rather complex series of bends on the drivers side to make
it fit, however the end result looks good. The left hand
side does not require as much bending put should be routed
in the same way.
Attaching the front flexible
unions was relatively easy, as soon as I worked out that I
had to use a banjo bolt on the inside of the car to connect
the in-situ pipes tot he external flexible pipes. A
banjo bolt is basically copper with threads on each end and
a couple of lock nuts! I also got the handbrake
mechanism in place so it could be also connected up to the
callipers.
I was really pleased
with my work, however the next day I had a nagging doubt as
to the routing of the pipes, but it turns out I was correct.
(click on the pictures
for an enlargement all 640*480 and aprox 150K in size)

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