Homemade YICS tool question

I made one of these yesterday...

Homemade YICS tool plans

I have two questions:

First, if I understand the function of this tool correctly, the precise position of the rubber tube sections that create the seals is not critically important. That is, they do not need to be lined up on the small ports in the gallery. They just need to block sections of the gallery between the ports, right?

Second, the piece of fuel line that I bought for this is somewhat thick-walled and difficult to compress. I also took home a piece of vacuum line that works much better. So my question is, will any fuel come in contact with this material and, if so, will that cause any problems? It won't be in place for very long, but I don't know the temperature rating for vacuum line or the effect on it of contact with gasoline.

Thanks!

 

Most fuel lines and vacuum lines will melt. I tried using a fuel line I had laying around, only had it in for a few min. Bike was not even warmed up yet and it already had started to melt.

 

Fuel and vacuum lines melted on me also. I ended up finding some silicone tubing that worked great.

 

Silicone sounds like just the thing. May I ask where you found that?

 

We use lots of silicone tubing here at work. It was some scrap that I found. McMasterCarr sells it by the foot in their catalogue.

 

Now I don't know how hot the head gets where the passage is but it's not cool there. I have made this tool twice with varying success. I used rubber fuel line with thick walls, didn't compress and fit poorly, used vacuum line compressed but was not fuel resistant nor heat resistant. Now it has thin walled fuel line that might be working but my vacuum gauges don't really change much when i use it so I am suspicious that it doesn't work. Someone on here was going to try a tube capped on one end filled with compressed air once in the head. That seems like a good idea but I have not heard if it worked. I have been on a quest to find High heat resistant flexible tubing that is also resistant to solvents. No joy. Any ideas what the factory tool used?

 

Is silicone not resistant to solvents?

I just ordered a couple of pieces of silicone tubing (two different degrees of firmness) from McMaster-Carr as suggested by mlew. It is NOT easy to find. That should be enough to make 5 or 6 of these tools out of each piece. If, after I get the thing put together with the new tubing and it looks like it's going to work, I'd be happy to sell short pieces to others for my cost.

I don't know the forum rules about this so somebody please admonish me if necessary.

 

Try a Model Shop- Siicon tube is used for joining a manifold to an exhaust on model aeroplane engines.I got a really good Yics tool of E-Bay on your side of the Pond.

 

Put a small piece of the silicon tubing in some gasoline or just wipe some on it and see if it starts to change or fall apart or something. Really though it wouldn't see much gas since there would be no vacuum to pull gas into the galley, just what is in there. Silicon has a really high heat rating and doesn't melt like the rubber would.

 

After thinking about it, why do you need the special tool? The way I understand it the tool is to shuts off a port to each carb so vacuum coming from the other ports doesn't interfere . Why not be able to stick a full piece ( length of head) of tubing in the hole to close up the port? I have read in another post where he used an old T shirt, so I would think that a piece of tubing would be better. Any suggestions?

 

I'll do the gasoline test when it arrives. The definitely heat won't be a problem. This tubing is rated from -93°F to 375°F.

 

I can see where the T-shirt trick could work, although it would be a little bit of pain to stuff it in there. A tube, though, would have to be very tightly machined to really seal. The way this homemade tool works is that, as you tighten the wingnut, it compresses the short pieces of hose so that they basically get fatter and completely seal the gallery.

 

how did the silicon tube work out?

 

The silicone tubing could handle the heat, but I eventually broke down and bought the real YICS tool. The trouble I had with the homemade tool was that I just could never be certain that I was tightening it enough but not too much, and that it was really sealing the ports properly.

I found one on eBay and it wasn't that expensive - maybe $25.

 

yeah, that's what I was thinking as I walked around home depot yesterday