New Car Woes - 1...Update

[964RS]

It’s about £4K+ to remove sill, kidney bowl and rear 1/4 then rebuild and paint and the pipes are about £1k each…

[911hillclimber]

Struth
Brass tube manipulated to a pattern you can provide, £1000 each, that is about 12 hours bench time each.
Just seems wildly expensive to me, heart breaking.

[RobFrost]

Fwiw I'd sand the ends of the two pipes smooth with a strip of sandpaper, get two 16mm inside diameter copper sleeves, slide them over each pipe, and bend or solder a 16mm outside diameter to bridge the gap. Then put it in place, slide the sleeves over and solder in situ. You might get a quote off a plumber to do this for a hundred pounds or so.

If the pipes need silver soldering it might be more involved.

If the bends are too tight to bend, you can buy 16mm 45 and 90 degree elbows off the shelf.

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[deano]

Fwiw I'd sand the ends of the two pipes smooth with a strip of sandpaper, get two 16mm inside diameter copper sleeves, slide them over each pipe, and bend or solder a 16mm outside diameter to bridge the gap. Then put it in place, slide the sleeves over and solder in situ. You might get a quote off a plumber to do this for a hundred pounds or so.

If the pipes need silver soldering it might be more involved.

If the bends are too tight to bend, you can buy 16mm 45 and 90 degree elbows off the shelf.

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I think there is some mileage in this suggestion, if the car can be driven before closing up the sill. I couldn't find any solder ring straight couplings for 16mm pipe, but compression fittings seem to be available in 16mm to 15mm. A pair of those and a skillfully shaped 15mm copper pipe section inbetween would seem to provide an in-situ repair solution.... would this be able to deal with the temperature swings though, I'm not sure, but this is an easily removeable and non-destructive repair if it turns out that the answer is no. I dont know whether the car is driveable once the pipe is fixed, I would want to test it before closing the sill...
e.g. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274591980828 ... BMzNHJj_hg

[christaylorsound]

For what it's worth, I have a compression joint repair on my '82 SC's oil pipe. Been leak free for 15 years or so, BUT the sill cover doesn't sit quite right, so I intend to remove and solder in a repair section form 22mm copper. Maybe this winter I'll finally do it! I'd go with RobFrost's suggestion, get a good plumber to do it for you.

[Bootsy]

I fitted a new toiler cistern the other day? Leaked a bit though first time

Sorry, not helpful

Hope you get this sorted Jason and can finally enjoy the car

[RobFrost]

One further thought - if soldering, make sure a high melting point solder is used as the oil can get hotter than water, and most plumbers are capable of pressure testing before you close up the sill. I've temporarily driven my car pre-restoration with the sill opened up like that - covered the hole over with gaffa tape and sprayed over the top with a rattle can so as not to attract any "unwanted" attention.

p.p.s. soldering there would make one almighty mess of paintwork on and around the sill.

[Bruce M]

Quick google suggests 16mm plumbing pipe is a French thing, hence why you can get 16mm to 15mm compression fitting reducers. So a couple of them plus a short pipe of standard 15mm pipe is a possible fix. You will need to movement in the pipe ends though to get the new piece in the middle.

However the photo does appear to show deep scratches in the pipe ends, so that might allow fluid to creep under the sealing olive. The typical fix for that is a single turn of PTFE tape over the olive which then seals on the fitting side of the olive. There is a risk of strands of PTFE getting in the oil so you need to be neat & also use the thicker PTFE tape which is the spec used for gas pipes.

Good luck.

[SeanP]

If it was me and I was repairing the pipes I would be seeking out a refrigeration engineer to braze in some refrigeration copper pipe. Its stronger than water pipe and designed to take more pressure than water copper pipe. They braze with Coupro rods which is a copper bronze alloy designed for high pressure and temperature applications in harsh environments. Silver soldering although a good solution can crack under vibration.

Sean

[911hillclimber]

You need to do a pressure test after any of these solutions.
Soldering and brazing around the back of the tube will be the weak spot due to a certain level of blind access.
Like the idea of a refrigerant engineer.
All worth a try as damage is very minimal.

[gridgway]

Getting way into the land of not knowing here, but if you can't get to the back of the tube, you can't braze or weld surely? You can probably solder pre-tinned copper joints as that just needs the joint to get hot enough.

[Nine One One]

To be honest, this is a £110k + car, I do not think Jason wants it ‘bodged’. Although all sensible ideas, it needs to be done properly front to back, as heavens knows what the state of the rest of the pipe is like. Remedying this portion, may well just put pressure on another part, that could give in the same way. Probably best to do it once, and do it right surely??

[gridgway]

Getting way into the land of not knowing here, but if you can't get to the back of the tube, you can't braze or weld surely? You can probably solder pre-tinned copper joints as that just needs the joint to get hot enough.

Mind you., on a cursory google, you get a max temp of 110 degrees, so not that useful really.

[gridgway]

To be honest, this is a £110k + car, I do not think Jason wants it ‘bodged’. Although all sensible ideas, it needs to be done properly front to back, as heavens knows what the state of the rest of the pipe is like. Remedying this portion, may well just put pressure on another part, that could give in the same way. Probably best to do it once, and do it right surely??

That is probably correct. But if it's a case of getting going prior to a proper job being done, then maybe an overt bodge might be helpful in the interim.

[911hillclimber]

Really, a full repair is the only way, £5k just makes you think, and changing those pipes to new probably should have been done during this rebuild, but...

In all the solder/ brazing ideas, done correctly, the joining material will flow throughout the joint as long as the parts are a very intimate fit and exceptionally clean, and stay so during the whole jointing process.
The pipes are oiled and as heat is added, about 300 C and much more, oil will migrate and is bound to come to the joint in question and that could readily contaminate and compromise the said joints.
Plumbers will be using fresh tube and couplings, water free, and will burnish the tube ends with steel wool of similar right before soldering.
You have to get the whole joint clean.

This joint have to be very robust when done, the tubes have to slip over each other I would say at least 40mm, so to bridge a gap of 100mm the repair inset needs to be 180mm long.
That is a long way to slip the tube over one end and slide is back so 40 mm is located each end.

It is knackering to type all this and a fresh pipe starts to feel better unless there is a £5k bill to swallow.

Even if the tubes were a fair price, even free, the repair to the car after is still a lot to bare.