After organizing the shop, I spent a little time installing grommets in the gear weldments where the fuel lines pass through. When I ran the lines, I had used vinyl tubing to protect the aluminum as I ran them through the gear mount. As it is darn near impossible to get a 1" grommet with a 3/8" hole in place with the fuel line installed, I started to think there was probably a better way. I ended up buying 1" grommets with 1/2" holes, and it was much easier to get installed.
After fitting the grommets, I removed the aluminum fittings that I had originally installed in the VA-168 manifold, and replaced them with steel fittings that I had purchased through Aircraft Spruce. My goal is to comply with the recommendation of using steel everywhere forward of the firewall (although Lycoming uses aluminum on a number of the low pressure oil return lines), so this was a start. Happy with how this all came together, now on to plumbing the boost pump.
