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Joe, the owner, made me feel a lot better about my predicament.
The nylon-like fuel lines that go from the pump in the driver's side tank to the passenger side tank and back are the bane of this design.
E is the driver's side pump/sender assy. H is the passenger side pump/sender assy. N and P are the lines in question.
The orange things at each end of N and P are where they separate from the tank assemblies.
These lines, while designed for being in fuel, are still attacked by it. They get brittle.
Dropping the tanks stresses them a lot.
I replaced the in-tank portion of these lines when I did the pump, but didn't do the lines in the cross-over or passenger tank.
Bearing in mind that any disturbance to these lines can break them, I dropped the tank THREE times.
A break was bound to happen.
Joe's going to send a camera up in there and find the break.
The good news is these parts are not expensive or scarce. The labor is what gets you in the ass.
You would think designers wouldn't use gas lines that degrade when exposed to gasoline.
ReplyDeleteI tend to think designers should have a different rule book when designing high end cars and gear vs. the mass market stuff. By analogy, in car radios you take out every penny because a penny per radio is saving like half a million bucks. But in a high end audio system, you put in the very best parts.
A 'vette isn't a mass market car. It should be designed with metal or something that will never be damaged by doing its job.
The nylon "hard" lines that replaced steel are, overall, better because they tolerate alcohol better. BUT...
DeleteThey're only better if you treat them like the hard lines they are and never ask them to bend.
The UAW is in play here. The engineers designed it so that the crossover plugs in and connects the inter-tank lines at the same time to squeeze more operations out of the skilled monkeys.
I wonder if one could replace the jet and return lines with external AN fittings.
Any chance you can retrofit with something better?
DeleteI am already designing something which would use AN fittings and put the jet and return lines outside the crossover. There's no reason but easing UAW workload for them to be inside.
DeleteStainless hard lines in the sender assemblies too.
It shouldn't even be difficult design work, to be honest, just need a few key dimensions.
Another bonus of what I'm thinking of doing is it will make it dirt simple to upgrade the fuel pump for nitrous and forced induction applications!
It prolly won't be cheap, but for what GM is charging for the same parts... it might be competitive.