Polished Stainless Steel Brake fluid reservoir tank
As we offer many 1 off tanks, headers and reservoirs this was another brought about by customer interaction and recommendation – always the best way.
This tank along the lines of a similar one we completed some time ago was for another Cobra replica. The customer wanted a top quality job to set off his engine bay.
I started with a sketch and turned this is a CAD file for laser cutting. The material is 316 grade stainless steel, laser cut from 1.5mm thick BA (bright annealed) , pc1 (plastic coated 1 side). The plastic coating helps to protect the surface of the material during processing as when mirror finishing you want the least amount of marks in it as possible.
Bright annealed is one type of finish that stainless steel is supplied in, to the unaware this is a “nearly” mirror finish, which still required buffing with mops and soaps to bring up to a full “mirror” polish. Other finished produced are “mill” finish – a dull matt finish, and also what is known as a DP or “dull polish”, almost a grained effect. Commonly these finishes are completed during the unrolling process at the mill when large coils are un wound and rolled flat, and cut to standard sheet sizes.
Main tank and machined items ready for assembly & tack welding
Tank Fittings
As you can see I have machined a small top hat threaded boss which will weld in the end of the tank to give a sight glass for a fluid level. The filler neck and cap are machined with a thread to screw together, the cap having a nice medium knurl around the flange for grip. Once the neck is welded to the tank and cleaned up I use copper slip on the threads to prevent any “lockup” on new threads when screwing the cap on, this is because the stainless threads may have rough or sharp bits on them and until they are used a few times; Stainless sometimes “picks up” or catches and locks up so that you simply cannot undo the cap.
Above you can see the item welded up and cleaned with the cap on and the sight glass in place.
Above image shows finished tank after final polishing, which we achieve by hand polishing with mops and soaps. Final finish with metal polish and cloth; final clean with stainless polish and soft cloth.
See that mirror stainless is very difficult to get a good picture as everything reflects off it.
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