DIY Aluminum Hard Line Clamps

[ronh72c10]

Here's how I made a set of aluminum hard line clamps for my tranny lines. The method is pretty low tech, I needed a drill press and belt sander, but I could see it being done with a regular handheld drill and a file or sanding block. These were made to fit a 5/16" tube but with different washers (more on that later) you can vary the tubing size or overall thickness of the clamp itself.

I imagine alot of people could free hand the profile of these clamps, I have no such skill so I used a little trick to make these in a repeatable fashion. Basically the secret of these is to choose a washer that has an outside diameter that corresponds to the curve of the edges and has an inside diameter that is the same size (or smaller) as the tubing you're using.

For these clamps I used 1/4" washers that had an ouside diameter of a little less than 3/4" and had an actual inner diameter of 5/16". There's no reason to use this exact size, for that matter you could use a bearing or "machinist's filing buttons" for this, the washers were low tech and cheap so I used them.