Hose Reel Repair

We have owned a 4-wheel hose reel for a very long time and the chromed intake pipes and fitting started to leak. It's a cart that looks like the image below, which is cropped to highlight the chromed bits with brass fitting that had corroded and started to leak. There is no criticism here. Every thirty years or so you might have to repair something that handles water and spends 365 days year outside.

I wanted to fix the input piping of our hose reel cart which looks like the one shown above.

The crux of the water intake is a clever part like the one shown below, which connects to a garden hose on the left end and connects to the reel's intake pipe on the right. It mounts to the frame and the reel rotates via a pipe which bears on the inside of the threaded end on the right. Unfortunately, this part does not seem to be available.

The part I couldn't find anywhere.

The only part I could find that would pass water and spin was a 90° fixture, part "A" in the photo below. The input garden hose connects to it (coming down from the top of the photo, below), the square brass block is what spins, and the water exits rightward via a pipe with a 1/2" male thread on it.

I found a "pillow block" (part "B", below) which is a bearing in a housing. With a lot of grinding on the inside opening of that bearing, I finally got the pipe from Part "A" to fit through. At that point, I just used a brass T (part "C") which connects to the hose that gets reeled up and to a black iron pipe that serves as the axle for the reel.

Parts used for something other than their intended purpose.

Here's another view of the rotating, 90° fixture with a nice, clear view of the horrible welds on the black pipe that connects to the brass T. The pipe is not welded to the brass T, of course. A black iron plug fitting is welded into the end of the black pipe, which is how the pipe/axle connects to the spinning assembly.

A different view of the creative assembly of hardware.

We'll see how long this lasts. The only drawback I see so far is that the reel is not affixed to the axle so there's no way to crank the axle to roll the hose onto the reel. I'm happy enough with how things went up to this point that I might try to figure out a way to weld a connection between the axle and the rusty flanges on each end of the reel.

Here is the solution in all its glory.