Baron’s Hobbies – Online Hobby Magazine

Tip Of The Day- Fuel Tubing Keeper

Posted on February 16, 2009 by aaronredbaron

Most of the fuel powered models hobbyists enjoy use alcohol based fuels which require silicone fuel tubing. A simple fuel tubing keeper made of the tubing itself is an effective method to preventing the tubing from slipping off its fitting. Although the practice is rather common, it seems every other modeler has his or her own method for slipping the doubler over the tubing. This author has used umpteen different methods including using the “step” on a ball point pen, and stretching the doubler with hemostats. The hemostat method worked okay, but it was always difficult to get the tubing to slip though the stretched doubler. A fellow modeler recently pointed out one day that if I used a pair of needle nose pliers, they were just the right width to allow the tubing to pass through

Step 1

Cut a short section of fuel tubing for your doubler. Don’t use Scissors to cut the tubing as it will not make a clean cut. You only need a short section of tubing approximately 1/8th to 1/4 of an inch long. Use the same diameter tubing as the fuel line.

Step 2

Slip the doubler over your needle nose pliers and expand the jaws to stretch the tubing. You want to slip the tubing on far enough you get to a slightly wider section of the pliers, but not so far you can’t open the jaws.

Step 3

Insert the fuel line between the jaws of the pliers and slip off the double on top of the line.  Make sure to slide the doubler far enough on that the fuel line won’t slip out.

Step 4

Replace the tubing back on its fitting, and slide the doubler down over it. Give a little tug to make sure it won’t slip off and you are good to go!