heinrich

My best guess is a burst damper at passenger firewall or a burst line running into the FMU at driver's firewall .... maybe more likely.

GoRideSno

That reminds me. I once purchased a used 85-86 fuel damper and it actually oozed fuel at the seam in the middle. Need to replace dampers and regulator too everyone!
Check out this recent addition to a local salvage yard. Look Familiar?

This particular yard lists 15 85+ cars 2 of the 15 are there due to engine fire dammage.
Edit: I just noticed that 3 of the 15 85+ cars are there because of engine fire.
1 in 5 or 20% of all 85+ cars will die of engine fire???????????
Andy K

Jim bailey - 928 International

The fuel hoses and lines between the pump and pressure regulator do obviously see much higher pressure and marginally safe hoses will fail much sooner than they would have failed with normal pressure. The basic fact is any rubber hose will fail sooner or later, this was just sooner. Everything which WAS rubber under the hood after 15-20-25 years is now pretty well cooked unless it has been changed. Blow a coolant / heater/ radiator hose and you just let out water. Power steering hoses leak ATF. Vacuum breather hoses simply let air in and oil vapors out. A/C lines let out Freon /134 or in some cases propane. Fuel hoses always let out fuel .

Carl Fausett

Jim - my experience with the burst return line was on a 84 L-Jet that we supercharged... the type that has 2 fuel pressure regulators, one at the back of each fuel rail. I agree with you - why should the return line have pressure?

But what we found was apparantly the cycling of the FMU kicking in and out under boost was creating a spike in return pressure - if only for an instant. It was enough to burst the hose and throw fuel all over the top of the motor.

We were lucky - no fire - but we dropped a bunch of gas on the highway! You could actually see it in the rear-view mirror.

The other hypothesis - that the 20-year old hose doesn't like to be flexed and wiggled during the installation and that is what does it.... I am not comfortable with that. I mean - that is how we INSPECT radiator hoses and heater hoses and vacuum lines - we flex them, twist them, look for cracks, shove our thumb into them to see how hard they are, etc - and replace them when they are bad. If they pass the poke and probe test - we leave 'em, but they do not fail from the test.

Anyway - what ever causes it - the new fuel line is cheap insurance and should just be replaced as part of the SC installation. After we discovered this on a customer's L-Jet SC install, we now include a hunk of it in every SC kit we sell.

Shane

As a follow up on this car:

I do not as of this time have any plans to rebuild her. I had $20k into her with the purchase price, supercharger, suspension, etc and a lot of that went up in smoke!
It will take appx. $10k to make her right again, but knowing the way I do things would probably cost another $20k. Too much for one car, and an early '86 at that, so I'd still have to upgrade brakes and such.

Now like Jim said when this happened, he offered me an '86.5 5sp to replace her. Well after repeated offerings, I finally accepted and picked the new addition up last Oct at Sharktoberfest. She needed some maint. done and a few parts, which Mark donated to the cause, and even some hands on work.


I drove her home 1200 miles. She is still parked right where I left her.






Anyway my plan is to take the best of Heidi and install them into Griselda, and make another outstanding 5sp.
The interior of Heidi is in fantastic shape and will go into Griselda. The engine will be rebuilt and installed as well. I prefer Garnet Red Metallic to Meteor Metallic so do you think it would be worth my time to strip Griselda down and repaint her Garnet Red Metallic??

Imo000

Ask yourself this........Do you have the time, drive and funds to start a project like this?

In my experience, major car projects always take 3 times longer and cost twice as much at the end. If the car is in nice conditions and it looks like it is, might as well enjoy it and drive her more often.

jarroyo

I've read most of this thread and doubt that the PO ever changed my fuel lines. My question is, How are these rigid steel fuel lines failing? Is it a design flaw? or are they failing at the unions?

heinrich

SHANE:
No way. Don't paint, just drive. Interior is no biggie and i have dibs on buying your leftovers ....

JEFF:
The lines fail only at the rubber parts, the steel pieces do not fail.