(Words and Photos by Scott Liggett) – Those who work on cars for a living often find time saving ways of getting the job faster and easier. Our friend, Yannick Sire of Sire Custom Performance, is no different. He’s been building and racing cars for twenty years. While we were hanging out at his shop on Saturday helping to do some cleaning in the shop when we came across this piece of old steel braided fuel line with a couple AN fittings and an a drilled piece billet aluminum. We couldn’t figure it out what it was for so we asked him. We got a lesson in response.
If you are a fabricator like Yannick is, you are spending a lot of time cutting tubing of all kinds. From Aluminum for air intakes, to roll cages, and exhaust pipes. Cutting pipes means filing off all the burrs left by process. On larger diameter pipe, that is a lot of burrs to remove. That can take forever using a rat tail file. A belt sander can handle most of the straight cuts, but what about fish mouth cuts and side cuts? Yannick discovered the same old braided steel that would tear up his hands would take burrs off cut pipes in lightning speed. The criss-cross pattern of the braided stainless steel is darn tough and take burrs off of aluminum and mild steel with no problem.
The braided steel will also flex to work in tight areas much easier than the rigid rat tile files too. Here he is showing the clean cut side on this aluminum turbo tubing.
We had to ask about the handle. Guys like us would just wrap one end of the fuel line with duct tape to keep from tearing up our soft hands because we have no imagination. Yannick took a piece of billet aluminum, drilled and tapped it for the AN fitting he had lying around. Then he gun drilled the handle and added dozens of holes to lighten it for faster action when filing and reduced fatigue. What a pro. We kid. Thanks Yannick.
Way cool!! Thanks for the tech tip!
Great tip.
Great tip , we need more tips on here . Thanks