OCB

"Mad!" said a Bro. "It's just a bracket!" exclaimed another Bro. "Like you only know Saw today" responded yet another Bro. Wife just knowingly smiles having coped with me all these years. She came home from work one late evening to find me at the kitchen basin sanding away (more on that later). I don't know what fellow readers of The N16 Files think of this article but I'll like to nicely call this "Obsessively Compulsive Bracketry".

Picture below of the mild steel bracket fabricated by GT Auto for my Turbosmart FPR-800 fuel pressure regulator.

 

The bracket itself

The more I looked at my fpr the more the familiar niggling feeling to replace the bracket grew stronger. Not up to my standardlah! I also took the opportunity to replace the crappy bracket for my ICE power supply cable. Picture below of the bracket.

Took both brackets to Bro Jack's chief engineer Ah Tiong who promptly fabricated for me some aluminium equivalents.

Here's how the new aluminium fpr bracket compares to the original mild steel version. Besides looking better the new brackets being aluminium are also lighter. The fpr bracket for instance weighs half the original mild steel bracket despite being thicker and without the additional "lightening" holes.

The new brackets still look unfinished so I bought a range of sandpaper to personally finish. Ain't no one gonna do the finishing for you as this takes a lot of time and if someone tried to make some money from all the hard labour frankly you ain't gonna pay. Besides I haven't done any personal sanding/finishing since SP days so consider this good practice.

Make sure you get the sandpaper fit for wet sanding. Started with 80 grit. The sanding removed the dull grey coloured corrosion protective coating but frankly I'm not concerned as the brackets are used at a location where there is very little risk of corrosion. Worse case can remove for some light re-finish after every six months or so. Picture below of the fpr bracket after 180 grit.

The higher grit you go the shinier the surface finish. I stopped at 400 grit as I prefer a satin matt look.

Pictures of the brackets installed.

Closer up of the fpr bracket installed.

The results are well worth it  if you ask me. Only cost me like RM30 to get the brackets fabricated. Add sandpaper cost and a couple hours of my own hard labour. I did check on cf equivalents but the cost will be exponentially more. Oh, and all fasteners are lightweight aluminium from Pro-Bolt. For a fraction of the fastener cost, you can use local stainless steel equivalents. Am now thinking if I should replace my oil catch tank mounting bracket or the entire oil catch tank itself. More (brackets) to follow for sure...

Stop Press! With some new fasteners from Pro-Bolt :)