I've consciously left the title rather broad in order to harvest input as much as possible. I'm contemplating running oil lines to specific parts of an IC engine. A scaled OD of say a full scale 0.250" OD line might be 0.062" OD. I have seen tubing in that range, but the fittings, generally for instrumentation or similar real world application, are ginormous. Like 5/16 or 3/8" hex nuts. Now it may well be that 0.062" may not flow what I need to flow or has other limits, but just generically wondering what is out there in the world of small lines?
I have seen/used 'plastic' lines that fit over barbed fittings, say 0.125"OD 0.0625"ID (or metric equivalent). Lines are available for air, water & also hydrocarbons depending on the tubing material, so no issue there. The barbs could be replicated to small fittings which look more at home on a model engine. Functionally would work, but not really the look of metal lines with more geometric bends etc.
- where do people source the typical copper lines & fittings I see on engines? I've pasted an example but I see them a lot on steam engines too. Are the tubing ends flared like I see on most real world applications? I think they have special nuts with specific angled seats? Do-able, but pretty fiddly.
- I considered a low brow solution where the line is permanently bonded to a slim fitting which mitigates threads & flares & nuts. But whenever the engine is disassembled one would snip the line, unscrew the fitting & replace. Seems wasteful. OTOH,it may only be a handful of actual fittings. 10 rebuilds over a lifeime may not be that bad.
