Got a phone call from my wife this morning - there was an extremely strong smell of petrol in the garage. She couldn't see any puddles under the car so it wasn't a major leak (such as my tank emptying) so she opened up the garage door and opened the window at the back to get some air through. As I was 45 miles away and very busy I couldn't get back to investigate until this evening.

Had a look tonight, and the short flexible pipe that goes from the pump to the metal fuel tubing had a pin-hole leak - turned on the ignition and a thin jet of fuel spurted from the pipe across the pump. This pipe is not stressed or stretched, and is long enough & slack enough to flex with the pump's vibration.

This bit of hose has been on the car just 2.5 years. It's the second time in 5,000 miles that I've had to replace rotted fuel hose. Doesn't ANYONE sell petrol pipe that's resistant to petrol?

Does anyone know of a supplier of fuel hose that is up to whatever BS or Euro spec for modern unleaded petrol (with all its nasty additives, such as benzine)?

More to the point, should one of the kit car magazines start kicking up a fuss about the inferior hose that's being sold to kit builders? Someone's going to lose their car (and maybe their property or lives) to fire unless this gets sorted.

It's due to the amount of poor quality rubber/nitrile fuel hose that seems to have flooded the market, that i have used ptfe lined braided hose for the entire fuel system on the SR2

Basically for those that don't know, it's the same stuff as the braided brakes lines only in a larger diameter.

Yeah it cost's about £10 per metre, but in the great scheme of things it is reasonably cheap.

Chris

Strange. I bought some cheap ass stuff from Merlin and it's working fine 10 years later. Guess it depends how cheap you go. Perhaps I shouldn't be too confident about the cheap as chips injection pipe I got off Ebay for my blower install

The Missus was going toward the download festy Saturday near East Mids airport, when two bikers over took her. As the second one did it burst into flames and left a trail of fire on the road. Then the fire went out and the biker pulled over and got off, then it went up again.

Dont know if it was fuel pipe, but scary stuff that fire business

I replaced some on the low pressure side of my system recently, I noticed a smell of fuel and it turned out to be the line from tank to the pump feeding the swirl pot.I changed it all after that but the under bonnet pipes that had been on the car for the same length of time were fine apart from some slight surface cracks on the fuel regulator section.
I am going to keep an eye on the pipes now as the replacement fuel hose seems softer and a bit thinner than that which t replaced although is rated at 12 bar.
The ideal would be ptfe braided lines like the brake hoses but works out very expensive once you buy all the fittings.
Paul

Try Glencoe (Sytec/FSE) who are great at fuel systems.Linky

[Edited on 17/6/10 by Dusty]

Is that old fashioned yellow looking clear pipe still on the market???

That allways seemed to last forever...

quote:

---

Originally posted by johnemms
Is that old fashioned yellow looking clear pipe still on the market???

That allways seemed to last forever...

---

i asked a similar question a few weeks back, not going to be using rubber braided pipe anymore, i'm getting nylon pipe