The Recycled Jet Engine

Step 6 The Fuel System

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Alas! Every project must be related to fire in some way! This was however, a challenge for me to solve, as the hours of construction quickly dissipated into nothingness. It had to be done, even though it meant I would have to sacrifice the idea of all-recycled to protect my safety.

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This part was tricky. I planned to run this off of the butane in disposable lighters, as they're cheap and have a built-in fuel control mechanism, yay!.. Now, it doesn't seem like a very good idea to build any sort of system that is going to be responsible for directing flammable gas out of less-than-reliable recycled items, so I used some brass tubing from the hobby store. I could have used four lighters, and the brass fittings from disposable lighters for fuel injectors, but I wouldn't be able to deliver fuel from each lighter at the same time, light it, and try to get the fan shaft moving, just not enough hands. Your fuel system will depend on what fuel you're actually using, so it could be very different from mine. This part isn't pictured in the diagram, but the red arrows depict where the fuel would enter.
Now for the actual steps, I first bent a piece of brass tubing roughly around the wider part of the housing.
Then, I drilled four equally spaced holes around the main housing, in front of the flame tube.
Next, I drilled four holes in the flametube adjacent to the ones we just drilled on the housing. The holes should be on the flat space between where the air is directed and the side of the housing. This should make more sense if you look at the pictures.
Next, I cut four small pieces of the brass tubing and bent them into a sort of "L" shape and slid them through the holes on the housing, and through the holes on the flametube.
Then, I JB Welded them into place, really globbing it on there to keep everything pressure tight, hopefully. You should let this set overnight.

Good morning sunshine! Since the JB Weld has set up, here's what to do next.
First, we're going to cut some notches in the brass tubing that is bent around the wider part of the housing where the "L" shaped pieces are sticking out. These notches will be a little wider than the outer diameter of the tubing, so that the "L" pieces can stick into them, allowing fuel flow.
Next, align the "L" pieces with the bent piece of brass tubing and secure them loosely with thin strips of electrical tape.
I then used a lighter to melt the tape a little bit, hoping to make it tighter on the tubing, but I don't know if it really helped much.
Then we're going to break out the JB Weld again and REALLY glob it over the joints between the "L" pieces and the bent tubing so that no fuel will leak out.
Let it set overnight, and you may have to patch up some spots tomorrow, and let those set.

^{(You may be thinking "Jeez, I'm using a ton of this expensive JB Weld!" You're really not, I used a little less than half a tube, and I had a ton of mistakes that I didn't document that used a lot of it)}