
Hello, I am 3 months into my first year apprentice and been in the trade for about a year, I went to Lincoln Tech before joining the union. A buddy of mine needed help installing a mini split which I took upon myself to install for a low cost, after 10 hours, I installed the new circuit breaker, disconnect box, hung outdoor unit on concrete wall, hung indoor unit, and drilled a 3” hole through about 6 inches of concrete. I then started working on the line set, did the liquid line first because it’s easily bendable. Then went onto suction line, I started bending really slowly because I do not have a pipe bender unfortunately, and I snapped the copper pipe right before the male thread. Today after work I tried cutting out the kinked part as seen in picture, and use a 5/8 coupling, the copper line coming out of the evaporator is a completely different OD than the 5/8 lineset! I tried swaging and no luck, is my next step trying to get a reducer coupling to fit? Maybe take my 5/8 lineset and a piece of the evaporator lineset to a vendor and find the right size? Im wondering if anyone else have made this mistake before or am I the only idiot.. I will never rush a job again no matter how tired I am. Any help or guidance appreciated.