The Waiting, Episode 1 Part 1

I am not patient. Outwardly, I may emit an ability to calmly wait for things to come, but internally fireworks and butterflies are competing for my mental skies. Last week, I dropped off a few parts that needed some deep cleaning and some others that needed a small bit of fabrication. They are still at the respective shops and when I was told, "sometime next week," I always like to think, "Yeah, we'll have that Monday/Tuesday." Being that my own business does work for contract I should know what that really means - "If we get to it ... uh ... maybe Friday? Probably Tuesday the week after..."

Last night, I finally decided to make my first big racing-parts order. I will not name the parts warehouse form which I ordered because I find there are things that I like about Jegs, Speedway, and Summit. They all have reasonably good customer service but parts availability and web-site easy of use vary based on personal taste and project demands. Actually, I ended up ordering from two of those last night because the question of availability. I ended up spending significantly more on the fuel lines than I had originally desired. In all honesty, Ford probably created the single best fuel injection system of the 1980's. It was a multi-port system, it had some learning built into it, and it still used dead-simple components to keep things reliable. As long as the air-meter was clean and the temperature sensors were kept fresh it really worked very well.

Unfortunately, when a company is first, or a pioneer, or generally ventures off the standards-laden path they need to invent their own standards. Ford did this in spectacular style with their fuel line (the part that runs from the tank to the engine) to fuel rail fittings (the part on the engine). I felt I could probably get the Ford fuel rail to adapt to the BMW fuel line fairly easily because I had a full set of Ford lines that went to a standard 5/16" steel line.


This is not even the hard part. This is simply an example of how tantalizingly close the two lines are in shape, size, and design. During actual implementation I ended up being uncomfortable with the need to use single-flare brake fittings or compression fittings to fit together. Plus, some of the racing bodies for which I'd like to do some racing explicitly ban the use of these fittings on fuel lines.

While writing this post, I got a call from the driveshaft shop doing the work for me, my shaft will be ready in about two hours. Awesome.