gas leaks

Hi John,

I will defer to injected car owners, but i have a few questions, Did you just fill the tanks for the winter storage?? and 2 did you just drive over anything that made the car lean to the right?
I had a similar experience with my carbed car and found it to be the original, (very funky) vent hoses on the right sidetank, on the top. These are often ignored, i don't know, maybe just because they are so small and part of the smog system. Anyway, I filled the car and parked it outside my house, (with a right slopeing off street parking and i got out to the smell of a lot of gas. I walked around the car and found gas just pouring off of the right rocker lip. I lifted the lid and found gas joyfully geyersing out of the side of a tiny evaporative recovery hose on top of the right tank.

Definitely find out what is leaking and stop it before storage. Maybe use a flashlight to look for soggy, (dark) hose sections.
Since the injected cars run much higher pressure, and there are a lot more hoses, there are a lot more things to check.

The lower hoses are quite beefy, so my guess is that one of the evap hoses gave up

Good luck,
chris

 

Look for stains on the tank. I had the same problem with vent hose at top. PITA to get to.

 

While I have never personally had a car catch fire unless it was running, having a car drip gasoline in my garage would totally freak me out. I would either endevour to fix the leak, or drain all the fuel and fix it come spring. But that SOB wouldnt be in my garage until one or the other were accomplished. Im not intimately familiar under the lid of the injected car, but almost any injection fuel line could be connected to a hose, and with the fuel pump hotwired could be used to fill gas cans to empty the car. But leaking gas on your garage floor while your in the house sleeping is the makings of a bomb!

I guess I was about 20 years old, I had this car I wanted to drain the fuel tank on. It had about 10 gallons of gas, and this nifty allen screw plug in the tank bottom. So with the car up on stands, I figured I would carefully remove the plug, then drain off the fuel neatly into fuel cans. I selected the proper allen wrench, couldnt turn it. I put an extension over the wrench for leverage, and proceeded to break the soldered fitting the allen screw threaded into right out of the tank. There I was, laying on my back with fuel pouring out a 3/4 inch hole right into my face like a stream from a water hose. I scurried out from under the car in a panic, and ran for the basement mostly blind holding my eyes shut. Gasoline really burns your eyes something awful. I washed my eyes out with soap, and tried to get back to the garage, but my eyes burned to bad. More water and soap. When I got back up there, the entire 10 gallons of gas was all over the garage floor and spreading. Its about 95 degrees outside, and I struggled trying to figure out what to do. The smartest thing would have been to call 911 and get the hell out of there. Instead, like an idiot, I opened up two 40 pound bags of cat litter and dumped it on the floor. Between evaporation and the "floor dry", it was all gone within a few minutes. Looking back it was one of the dumbest things I ever did, but I blame that rediculous plug more than anything. It wasnt ever going to come out with heat or drilling, but in my youthful inexperience I didnt know that. I believed it would strip out the allen plug if anything, not break the whole soldered joint of the gas tank.

Why bother with this stupid story? The 308 has a big fat drain plug down under the car on the crossover feed line between the two gas tanks. DO NOT attempt to loosen that plug. Drain the fuel through the fuel pump, siphon it out, or drain it at the fuel line fitting at the bottom of the left tank. You could, once the tanks are pretty empty, remove the hose clamps and allow the small residual amount in the crossover to pour into a drain pan with a ton of floor dry down on the floor. But please, dont play with that drain plug unless the pipe is out of the car and clamped in a bench vice. The plug on my 77 GTB wouldnt turn no matter what I did, I think it would take a great deal of heat to break it loose. But if you twisted it to hard, its just an aluminum pipe, and its possible it could break off that fitting weld. Then you would have over a 1 inch stream coming out. Have a ton of ventilation and make sure anything, motors, lights, pull the power on the garage opener, make sure everything that could produce a spark is well away from you. And have a friend standing there to run away in terror when it all goes bad. Seriously, when my dad was in the Air Force in 1942, he watched a friend he knew cleaning a 50 cal machine gun over a bucket of avgas, smoking a cigarette, and the stuff blew up in his face. He had just told the guy he shouldnt be doing it that way. He died before the sun went down. When I ran to the basement thats all I could think about. I really thought I was going to go up like a roman candle. Gas dripping stories always bring me back to that day.

 

RH tank only has return from engine, some vent tubes and the big lower cross connect back to main tank.

The two lower couplings are pretty straightforward but I would check the tank itself, if you do not find a suspect rubber line....

 

Thank you sooo much for the heads-up on the gas tank plug..My 1980 400i has such a screw plug as you just indicated..I seems that I have a fuel blockage on the V12 ...and was about to attempt to drain the twin tanks..don't believe I'll do that now..an aside..dad was in the AAf in WWII ..B-17's..ariel crew-chief..told me about a guy smoking during re-fueling..burned down several perfectly good airplanes..thanks again..Jacques

 

I think artvonne was referring to another car, not Ferrari...I have drained the fuel from my 308GTB using the plug in the lower aluminum cross connect pipe, I ran most of it out first though...

Obviously care should be used as he is right breaking the fitting weld would require replacing the piping...

..check and see if it's not the tube from the engine system to the tank nipple at the top, I replaced mine last weekend, it has a check valve in line, if that tube has split from age it would leak down from the top of the tank and drip from your RH fender ahead of the wheel, the couplings on the lower cross connect if failed would drip directly to the ground below the bodywork....

 

If you are going to be doing something that could involve gas, BE PREPARED:

Have a fire extinguisher close at hand - preferrably halon/halotron, co2 - 5 pound minimum

Have a plan for the possible scenarios like overfilling your container, spills......Gas soaked rags/greas sweep are still very flamable, so get it out of the garage.

Turn off anything with a pilot light, upplug the dryer, so someone doesn't come out and use it.

If you are using a shop light, be damn carefull you don't drop it in the gas.

Do the job outside, so it doesn't take the house/family with it.


I have been involved in several gas/vehicle fires, (only one of them mine - not the 308). In every case, if you could get the fire put out soon, you are miles ahead. Fires allowed to go on for a few minutes heat everything up so much that if you put it out, the residual heat is enough to start the fire again.

It would take less than 5 minutes for your pride and joy to get totaled, but it could be replaced.

sorry for the rant, hope it saves someone/ferrari.
chris

 

I, too, must say thanks. I am days or so away from tackling my hoses and had planned to use that drain plug. Suppose it couldn't hurt to try it anyway. I had planned on draining what I could with the fuel pump.

Seamus

 

Last weekend I pulled the feed line off the LH tank the feeds the fuel filter, I got pretty darn good flow from that one...'till I jammed a bolt in it! LOL!

 

you guys have it easy.

last weekend i filled my lotus up with premium and went out for a relaxed drive. i worked a 12 hour day Saturday, and as i was walking up the driveway i smelled fuel. i started wondering how the hell my 2002 truck already had a fuel leak when i saw a river of fuel running out from under the garage door down the driveway. the right tank in the lotus sprung a leak, and drained BOTH tanks. luck my garage is seperate from the house, and my gutter trapped the fuel before it got into the ground or grass.

tanks are off getting fixed, but i would love to find some alloy tanks and get rid of the steel ones!

took the whole car apart.....
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I took out the big fat drain plug of my GT4 and it was easy to get out with a box wrench. But did I first drain out all of the fuel I could first with the fuel pump? You betchya. I even jacked up the passenger side of the car to empty all the gas I could into the fuel pickup. There was very little fuel in the pipe after jacking the car up, probably only about a quarter cup. This was to repace the crossover pipe's rubber hoses sections.

My first project car was a VW Scirocco and the very first chapter of the book I was using to guide me had a great reminder about fuel. It went something like "a gallon of fuel will propel you, three of your best friends, their luggage and this 2500 lb car at 60mph for 30 miles. Just think about how much energy that really is there in that one gallon of gasoline. In short, BE CAREFUL." And I have. I think of that passage from that book everytime I deal with gasoline (and everytime I have to push a car around by myself).

 

Arghhhh!!! Thats twice today someone thought I was dising them. Not trying to make anyone feel stupid, really, I was not. I think I was pretty damn stupid trying to pull the drain plug out of a full gas tank. I think it was even more stupid of me that I didnt get the hell away from the house after covering the garage floor with more than 10 gallons of fresh gasoline on a 95 degree day. We do really really stupid things sometimes, and usually through nothing more than dumb luck, we live to tell about it. If we grow any brain cells from the process, and if we care about others, we warn them. Thats really all I was attempting to accomplish. Glad you got it figured out.

 

make sure you check the clamps on the hoses that you replaced a couple k ago. i replaced the tanks on my testarossa due to a leak that was a loose filler hose that only leaked when filled. me big dummy

 

My 308 QV had kinda the same leak- a puddle in front of the right rear tire after a winter fill-up. It turned out to be the tank itself. The tank was then removed, stripped, repaired, painted, and then all was well.

 

I only put 20 dollars worth of fuel in my 308 on a cold engine at the closest station to my house. Crossover and fill hose are all new but those braided vapor hoses scare me.

 

Jon --

I recently replaced all the hoses on my 81 308 (including all the fuel, vent, and evaporation collection). For the hoses connected to the right side tank, you'll want to remove the (wheel, of course), the wheel well, and the A/C compressor (at least d/c and move aside) for access.

Also, don't overlook the fact that the supply and return lines for the fuel injection meter pass over on the right side of the engine compartment. These are up high and if they have a leak, will drip all the way down and could trick you into thinking the leak is coming from the tank ---- I would check these lines first as they are easy to get to. Yes they are steel lines but often they can develop cracks and corrosion causing leaks, and check their fitting connections, too.

 

Removing the compressor is not too bad --- 4 or 5 bolts (remove it from its mounting bracket --- no need to remove the bracket itself), plus 2 or 3 on the tensioner pulley bracket, as I recall. But, do keep in mind that when you d/c the lines, of course you will lose all the refrigerant so the system will have to be recharged when you re-connect it. For me this wasn't a problem as I was permanently removing my A/C system anyway. The old R-12 systems are impractical to have recharged --- can't hardly find anyone who can get the refrigerant anymore, plus the R-12 is ridiculously expensive. Most pepole have converted their systems to the R-134a by now, or simply don't use the A/C.

 

I know it's not relevant to this thread but FYI if you're interested, ...nothing beats R-12!

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=155620&highlight=a%2Fc+license

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