I am looking to form a brass gas tank for my cycle-car since it fits the era and will be exposed. I have a some experience with brazing steel using bronze and sweating copper (basic plumbing) but no real experience with brazing brass so I have the following questions: People who have made brass gas tanks, what thickness did you use? Are you using straight brass or a copper alloy? Are you doing lapped or butted seams? What filler are you using? Did you coat the tank with anything to prevent oxidization? Any videos or tutorials you can recommend? Finally, if you have any pictures of brass tanks for inspiration I would love to see them!
Search Brass Fuel Tank Kits for Hit and Miss engines. Lots of kits out there, although probably too small for your application, but they should give you ideas on material, sizing, etc.
Yes! They do absolutely incredible work but I need a very specific shape to fit the fairing so I'll need to make it myself
I would not recomend brass for a car fuel tank, joints would have to be lapped riveted and soldered or seamed and soldered. Could be gas welded but the warpage would be horendous. I have tig welded heavy gauge brass with parent metal filler and reverse polarity but would not bother to do this with light gauge.
Would be nice to see what you come up with as I was looking into making a copper gas tank, but gave up on the idea.
You might want to look at this,too. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-8319-3_40. Brass might not be your best material.
We brazed all kinds of brass parts to copper in our mobile HVAC units. All the copper fittings were brazed on the heat exchanger coils we made in house.
I raced with a guy in the new Novice division at Islip. Most of us used VW tanks strapped to the trunk floor and they were approved. This one guy had a new car for the season, in the trunk was a 24" cube of a gas tank. I'm not doing the math, but the builder said it was FULL on opening night. A few races later we found out that it was made of .050" COPPER sheet.... Tech totally missed the fact that it was not steel.
Just a question, do you anneal brass sheets to be able to form them, like copper? I watched the show Jesse James had when building MC’s and he made a copper tank as I recall, annealed it with his OA and it softens up to form. Made really cool chopper tank.
I have been thinking of the same thing. I once worked as a "Metal Artist Craftsman" at a cool place called Heritage Metal Works. They had a foundry and metal art shop with tons of neat stuff going on. I had never done it and just went up with a trunk full parts of I had made. (he liked this I think http://www.accuratepower.com/Machine/fabrication.html )They hired me and I just started doing it. They gas brazed all of their brass and bronze together. He called it "soldering". I had soldered a bunch before and what we were doing was way hotter and a little harder to do. I looked up the wire and flux and it was for brazing carbides on to steel shanks. They used it because you could polish the braze line away, it blended real well with the brass and bronze, and was strong as shit. I also had to forge some shapes from chunks of brass. Just like a blacksmith with iron except you would anneal, cool, hammer, re-anneal and so on. You only get a few anneals before the brass would crack. Hammering work hardens so you have to move the metal right the first time. It was more of a bitch than blacksmithing. My thinking on a tank is that the trick would be in the seams. You would need some kind of lap or rolled over joint that you could flow the braze into. I would pack the joints with flux before I crimped them. Wouldn't be as hard to make something tubular or square, tougher to make a shape. Breaking the edges to make the joints would be harder on a curve. They did it though, tops of lanterns and such. Good luck ! I'll be watching. Mike A "how to" link https://www.oldmarineengine.com/discus/messages/3433/253935.html Some HMW stuff I did
I miss Islip Speedway. My older brother took me there when I was a kid. Later when I got my own car, I raced on the eighth of a mile track. Other than the look of brass why would someone want a brass tank?
Why would it have to be riveted and then soldered? I feel like I have seen quite a few tanks that aren't riveted. Can you tell me a bit more?
A friend made one of them live steam model engines, he used silver solder for joining the brass and copper plates of the firebox, which might be overkill for a fuel tank but it is extremely strong. If you use soft solder, I'd choose the lead free solder since according to one of the copper fitting makers, it's about twice as strong as lead / tin solder.
We silver soldered a lot of brass at one machine shop I worked at, we did RF waveguide work. The joints were quite strong, we could easily machine the brass or copper flanges after they were attached.
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