Water

Overkill?....perhaps.....unique?....yes.....practical?....absolutely!
For years, yes I can actually say that because it has been years, I have been thinking about where my water inlet is going to be.Aaaannd....what is it going to look like?













There are numerous stock water ports, some bad....some better than others.

But I liked the look of this. This is actually a fuel door for race cars, and has nothing to do with water.......so it should be perfect!

My thought was, its going to be visible no matter how I do this, so why not make it a feature rather than a distraction.

The flanged door comes in to pieces, a threaded inner collar and the cap for the exterior. A simple task of drilling the appropriate sized hole in the body and we should be good.And yes I had to buy a new hole saw bit for a 3 7/8" hole.
My design challenge however is inside the door. I couldn't just have a huge hole into the bus where you simply reach in and grab the fill hose. No I wanted a backing on the inner collar to seal the outside from the inside, but also to allow for a retractable 1/2" SS hose to come out to aid in the attachment of the water supply hose. I thought about welding an aluminium disk to the back of the threaded flange, but then an idea struck me.....cutting board! I had pirated a cutting board from Michelle a few years back when I was creating the drive train shifter......it would be perfect!





















Once I had the disk cut out I could simply attach it to the back.
So a simple task of drill and tap the flange...........

Ehhhh CRAPOLA!

I broke the cardinal rule, lubrication. I thought....ehhh...its not that thick and its aluminium....how hard could it be?
Apparently hard enough, especially when you put a torquing pressure on the tap by mistake.

Try as I might I was unable to back the broken tap out. So as much as it bothered me to do I had to leave the shrapnel in place. I cut it off and smoothed it down. Then drilled and tapped a new hole immediately adjacent (the one with the bolt in place

The end product was just how I had envisioned it. But now I wanted to run the hose through the plate. The FPT end of the hose is 3/4" but the hose is only 1/2" diameter. I have to figure out a cleaver way of handling this one.

While I ponder that problem, it was time to bite the bullet and drill another damn hole in the side of a perfectly good body panel!













In for a penny....in for a pound