PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN BRENNANt may be hard to believe but, back in the day, the coolest way to improve the plumbing under a hot rod’s hood was to add some red plastic fuel lines and polish brass fittings. The problem was that the fuel lines became brittle, cracked, and leaked, creating disaster, and the brass fittings would turn dull overnight. Today, we have a variety of plumbing options from Pure Choice Motorsports that not only look great but are also safe and durable.
Rex and Annette Watson are the owners of Affordable Street Rods, located in the small town of Peabody, Kansas. When given the opportunity, they decided to expand their business by acquiring Pure Choice Motorsports. A leading supplier of automotive plumbing products, Pure Choice offers high-performance fittings, hoses, tubing, and accessories. The Watsons also carry the Pure Stealth line of plumbing products with the company’s proprietary black ceramic coating. In addition to fittings, the Pure Stealth line includes black braided hoses with 24 color options for accent braiding in a nearly infinite variety of patterns. The braid covering on these hoses isn’t a sleeve; it’s adhered directly to the hose so it will never slip or come apart.
To give us some pointers on plumbing, Rex stopped by Hot Rods By Dean to see what was needed to hook up the power steering, air conditioner, and heater in Brian Brennan’s C3 Corvette. While there are a variety of options for making all those connections, including E-Z Clip hoses and fittings, the decision was made to use a Pure Stealth reduced-barrier braided hose with Pure Stealth crimp fittings so everything would match.
For A/C lines, the decision was made to use Pure Stealth reduced barrier braided hose, again with crimp fittings. Rex explains that making custom hoses is straightforward. After carefully measuring the Pure Stealth braided hose or standard reduced barrier hose, it is cut to length—it’s important to make a square cut. The fitting is then slipped onto the hose until it bottoms out and is oriented in the correct direction. To prevent damaging the finish on the fitting, the supplied “crimp cloth” is wrapped all the way around it and secured with a short length of masking tape. A dedicated crimping tool is required to secure the fitting. The type offered by Pure Choice is handheld, which means it can be used with the hose in the car, unlike the type that must be clamped in a vise. After completing the A/C hoses, Rex used the same procedure to make up the heater hoses.
The finished braided Pure Stealth hoses and crimp fittings are not only functional and look clean, but matching them all shows great attention to detail—plus, they’re much cooler than red plastic fuel lines.
AN Fittings
When discussing fittings, the designation AN is often used—a term that may not be familiar to everyone. The AN refers to Army/Navy, a system developed by the government during World War II to ensure the interchangeability and compatibility of parts made by different manufacturers. AN fittings are used with 37-degree single flares that have reinforcement sleeves (these 37-degree flares are also found on JIC hydraulic fittings), as opposed to 45-degree automotive fittings and inverted flares.
The AN system uses numbers to identify different sizes of metal tubing and their corresponding fittings, with the same numbers also assigned to the hoses and their ends. Known as dash numbers, these indicate measurements in 1/16-inch increments. For example, a -3 line equal 3/16 inch, a -8 is 1/2 inch, and so forth.
