HAS ANYBODY OUT THERE REPLACED THIER OIL COOLER LINES WITH SS BRAIDED HOSES? LOOKING FOR A SOURCE FOR FITTINGS, ETC. MAY REQUIRE REPLACING OIL COOLER ALSO. ALL SPECULATION A THIS POINT. ANY HELP/ADVICE APPRIECIATED. KEEP ON THUMPIN!

 

Never seen anything done. Guessing because the are hard lines with flex joints at the ends.

I cut and shortened mine.

If you decide to get rid of the stock cooler please let me know My dad is interested it buying one.

 

[QUOTE=Truckinduc;209195]Never seen anything done. Guessing because the are hard lines with flex joints at the ends.

Mine are braided lines.
I cut the stock lines off the fittings which I drilled out to accept AN fittings.
Brazed those into the stock fittings.
Cut the hoses to length, assembled the fittings and installed the cooler.
Got the hoses and fittings from Earl's Supply in Lawndale, Ca.

http://www.anplumbing.com/

Kai Ju

 

Ya is was referring to stock kits you could buy.

do you see any benefit to braided lines?

 

I can't weld worth a damn but I can cut,braze and screw...........

Kai Ju

 

Ha, got ya.

I can weld OK, not great. The stock lines are paper thin, and extremely hard to weld. Mine still has pinholes in it.

 

I'm having corrosion issues w/ mine. Not leaking, but developing some rust acne on them. I assume it has something to do w/ salt and/ or dirt being deposited on them and not being washed down before storage. I was thinking to replace them w/ equal size stainless tubing. Is that realistic?

 

Clean and paint or heatshrink tubing if you can get it over the fittings.

On the other hand, it really wasn't that hard to make my own with standard plumbing and AN fittings.

Kai Ju

 

If lines with stainless tubes were available to replace the stock chrome tubes, I'd probably go for them. Living near the ocean my stock chrome lines are rusted badly.

 

HEY KAI JU NICE WORK. APPEARS THAT'S AN AFTERMARKET OIL COOLER. NEED TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO WITH MINE SINCE I HAD A CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH AN ARMIDILLO. TEXAS ARMORED RAT!

 

I assume when you refer to braze, you're talking about welding........and what is an AN fitting? Excuse me, I'm a mechanical moron.

 

Both entries from Wikipedia:
Brazing is a joining process whereby a filler metal or alloy is heated to melting temperature above 450 °C (840 °F)—or, by the traditional definition in the United States, above 800 °F (427 °C)—and distributed between two or more close-fitting parts by capillary action. At its liquid temperature, the molten filler metal and flux interacts with a thin layer of the base metal, cooling to form a strong, sealed joint. By definition the melting temperature of the braze alloy is lower (sometimes substantially) than the melting temperature of the materials being joined. The brazed joint becomes a sandwich of different layers, each metallurgically linked to the adjacent layers.

Common brazements are about 1⁄3 as strong as the parent materials[citation needed] due either to the inherent lower yield strength of the braze alloy or to the low fracture toughness of intermetallic components. To create high-strength brazes, a brazement can be annealed to homogenize the grain structure and composition (by diffusion) with that of the parent material . On the other hand, brazed joints in automotive sheet metal are considerably stronger than the surrounding native sheet steel.

As far as AN fittings are concerned, here goes:

The AN thread is a particular type of fitting used to connect flexible hoses and rigid metal tubing that carry fluid. It is a US military-derived specification stemming from a joint standard agreed upon by the Army and Navy, hence AN. The standard is sometimes mistakenly referred to as "Air Force-Navy", but it dates back to World War Two, before there was a separate US Air Force.

AN sizes range from -2 (dash two) to -32 in irregular steps, with each step equating to the OD (outside diameter) of the tubing in 1/16" increments. Therefore, a -8 AN size would be equal to 1/2" OD tube (8 x 1/16 = 1/2). However, this system does not specify the ID (inside diameter) of the tubing because the tube wall can vary in thickness. Each AN size also uses its own standard thread size.

AN fittings are a flare fitting, using 37° flared tubing to form a metal-metal seal. They are similar to other 37° flared fittings, such as JIC fittings, which is their industrial variant. The two are interchangeable in theory, though this is typically not recommended due to the exacting specifications and demands of the aerospace industry. The differences between them relate to thread class (how tight a fit the threads are) and the metals used.

Note that 37° AN and 45° SAE fittings and tooling are not interchangeable due to the different flaring angles. Mixing them can cause leakage at the flare.

The info in the third paragraph allowed me to mix and match AN fittings with common hardware store fittings that I brazed ( there is that word again ) into the cooler/engine adaptors

Kai Ju

P.S. gotta love the internet.
Having said that.............Log Off And Ride