I assembled the wiggins into a couple of lathe turnings that had tubeless
tire valves installed in their ends. I used rather viscous JB Weld to attach the
wiggins to the turnings. This allowed me to connect a pressure gage to
one tire valve and use the other to pump it up. Everything worked great
except I had a slow leak in the JB Weld joint. The joint showed no signs
of pulling apart even with 80 psi in the fitting but it did leak. The
drawback to epoxy or JB Weld is it is near impossible to fix a leak once
it sets up. So If you think this is a problem weld the wiggins fitting to the
coolant pipes using a tig welder. A longer o-ring part as shown or a less
viscous epoxy adhesive will also mitigate this problem. The test rig
had the short (0.6 inches long) o-ring parts.
I did not roughen the parts with sandpaper to improve the bond. I merely
cleaned them with alcohol before I spread the adhesive. I feel the adhesive
is perfectly adequate from a structural point of view if you don't
have any pin hole leaks.
Here is a picture of the set up in boiling water while the unit is
pressurized to 25 psi. This was the limit of the pressure gauge I had.
The leak caused it to lose pressure initially at the rate of about one
psi every two minutes. The o-rings did not leak and they worked perfectly.
It would be a wise idea to anodize the sleeve to forestall corrosion in
this important part.
Paul Lamar
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