Changing out Fuel Lines

Understood...

All I can say is the hoses I have been using to date meet all modern fuel applications according to the manufacturer. This includes unleaded and 10% Ethanol as stated in the suppliers information. There is no way to know that the fuel suppliers were cheating the mix, or for that matter that it sepperates when sitting over a long period. Even more of a concern is the fact that even the marine grades may not hold up in the future.

As far as "all of the hoses being critical" this is true but that said I am most concerned about the lines that are filled with fuel and not vapor. From what I have been told it only has had an effect on the hoses that have fuel sitting in them for a long period of time.


And then there is this finding:

"Problems with the seperation of the alcohol/water and the fuel are a concern as the Coast Guard found that at the boundry layer between the two seperated components there was a highly corrosive layer that attacks aluminum"

Is anything safe?

 

I use fuel injection clamps exclusively instead of the standard worm gear type. FI clamps cost a bit more, but use a bolt and nut. Worm screws can back off. FI clamps surround the hose with a smooth band of metal. Worm screw clamps cut into the hose. FI clamps also look a lot better.

 

Hi Dave,

I am also in the process of installing all new fuel hoses on my 78GTS, any chance I could get some of those hoses from you? Will you be selling those?

Thanks,
Helmut

 

I believe that Peter is correct in his statement regarding the fuel being the issue. I have found pending failures of hoses with date codes ranging from 05-08 which strongly suggests there wasnt a batch of bad hose. After spending days with hose companies engineers who all played completely dumb even after I overnighted failed samples to them I gave up on that route and just started digging.

In Peter's defense, he speced the hose in his kits to an accepted norm in the industry. I only ran across the problem and was able to identify the issues because I was using the same fuel hose at my shop as Peter was supplying. I contacted Peter about my findings once I saw he was offering the hose kits and we discussed what I had identified and what I had suspected and to his credit he very quickly upgraded his supply to specs beyond what SHOULD be required. This is not Peter's problem and he was doing a service to the group by supplying a kit that should have worked fine under all conditions. Personally I believe anything short of SAE30R9 is no longer acceptable and have found no one supplying the large sizes in that spec. I also believe that the US Coast Guard took this a little more seriously than the automotive industry and believe that the marine hose exceeds the R9 spec but do not know that for a fact.

I find it very suspect that this happened to coincide with the price of Crude skyrocketing to $140+ and also suspect someone in the chain was stretching supplies a bit using the alcohol, hell, I have tested the fuel and found this to be the case. Normally I do not post about this type of thing until I fully understand the topic and have identified to source of the problem but I consider this a special case where safety is with out a doubt an issue that over rules my own rules.

I consider the two most critical hoses to be the cross over hose and the supply hose to the pump as they contain the entire fuel supply. Peter's use of marine grade hose is, in my opinion based on my research, the best that can be done for the moment and I believe is a safe direction I intend to go. The only reason I looked into having the large diameter hoses produced to my spec is because even in the marine grade hose the wall thickness makes for a VERY difficult install and with this new compound I am able to produce these in a flexible thin wall to ease the install. I really have no want to be a parts manufacturer, I am just finding it a requirement when I am unable to locate parts at a reasonable cost that far exceed our requirements. This is what led to me having the coolant hose built for me and I am proud to say that I have found a manufacturer that was excited to supply a Made in USA product, at a reasonable price and which is made to Military Specs. When a good friends Mondial required the two belly pan hoses and Ferrari wanted $1200 pr., that was the final straw. Heck, it saved me money to have it made in 6' lengths!! Enough of this foolishness, if I cant buy it, I will build it and if it's good enough for the US Military, its good enough for me. The fuel hose is a far more critical undertaking and on this I require a compound that is impervious to all known fuels before I am willing to jump into that arena. I am unwilling to have anything on the road before I have personally tested it, there is more than enough of that type of thing going on already where owners are unknowingly proving to be the test bed for new products. If the new hose I am testing proves to be good under all conditions then I will make it available.

I have folks that are far smarter than myself involved in this now and should have answers that bear merit soon. If the problem tends to go away for a while now that the Crude prices are down, it will not require a fuel engineer to tell me what happened. Fuel isnt going to get any better so we might as well bite the bullet now and deal with it. This is nothing new to us in the business as we have had to deal with accel pump diaphrams in the carb cars and fuel pump diaphrams where the rubber melted off the canvas some years back now, this is just the next step in the chain. Having the in tank rubber components made is requiring some effort but this too is now underway and I have folks that do this for a living dealing with it now and it will be Made in the USA where I can control the quality and to a small extent keep someones job intact.

Dave

 

Not trying to say Peter is to blame, just pointing out that I purchased a kit and I'm in the same boat as the rest of you. If I didn't I would have gone down to Napa and would have been given the exact same hoses as speced by Peter. I'm upset over having my car tore down all summer for maintenance and the last item while I had the AC and the skirts out of the car and jacked up was to change those hoses only to talk to Dave six weeks ago and find I may have to drain the tank and pull them again! I hate doing **** like this twice!!! Didn't get to enjoy my car once this summer for fear of owning a roman candle. Now everytime I walk into the garage I get down on my hands and knees and look for fuel spills. (there, venting complete!)

 

The fuel seperation issue is the next to be looked at and then on to how much water is held in suspension in the alcohol. I have one work bench that now looks more like a Lab than an auto repair shop and have dated beakers filled, dated and sealed with fuel in them to see if I can see a seperation occuring. The answer is yes, and in as little as 3.5 weeks.

To find an additive to address this my mind says we have to have a constant in here somewhere. The fuel is not a constant and we are now into the "winter grade" fuel in the northern climates which I would bet is worse yet than the summer grade and plan on doing tests this coming week. I CAN say that my mileage on the Jeep has dropped like a rock once the winter grade fuels came. At this altitude you can pour a small puddle of the crap on the ground and throw matches at it and it wont burn! The alcohol levels we are now seeing cause the fuel in carbs, where it is not under pressure, to boil at very low temps. Carb sincing and balancing now has to be done on cold engines as once they warm up it is often difficult at this altitude to keep them idling at all. Its a fine balancing act to say the least as the EPA wants tighter emissions regulations while using NON-flamable fuels.

The alcohol in the fuel is not new but the hoses going bad is as I have not seen it before this summer. I do not believe the sky is falling just yet but as all the modern area cars have the aluminum tanks it is something that we need to look at from a preventitive view point and find a solution to. In this direction I plan to try to identify the chemical present in this boundry layer that the Coast Guard speaks about in numerous reports. Once identified, a solution can be implimented for that but I still have a real problem with the cars starting in the spring and running on alcohol and water that will be at the bottom of the tanks. It is because of this I believe that dealing with the seperation itself is the correct way to address this. If it was easy the fuel companies would have already addressed it or some chemist would have a fix all product on the market but with the ever evolving fuel mixtures can a single additive product deal with all of this? I suspect not. Might we be required to plug in some type of vibrator attached to the fuel tanks along with the battery tender for winter storage? A recirculation pump operated once a month just to turn the fuel in the tanks over? Mandated winter drives just to stir things up?

I think it is the right time to start looking at this issue.

Dave

 

I know the frustration first hand. This last year it seemed I was doing every job in the shop twice and all because of failing parts. We started looking at one another and wondering if this was really a "for profit" business as we sure didnt see any.

I enjoy working on the cars but never thought that continuning education meant I would have to become a materials engineer just to do these cars properly. Anyone working on these cars now that isnt turning over rocks and asking "why?" isnt doing their job. For a great many years it was accepted that if it came in a yellow box, it was the best money could buy, no longer. Hell, we cant even trust hose to be up to the task and that is rather basic!

This is the wrong time for me to be throwing time and money into this type of thing with the economy being what it is and a threat I will be taxed out of existance in the near future. On the other hand, doing all of these jobs twice is an even more painful demise if I stay the path we were on. Time to smile, shake it off and move forward with a goal in mind, its what our Greatest Generation did and they were faced with much worse.

Dave

PS,
I have not seen a catostrophic fail of any of the hoses to date where they leave puddles. I have seen them "sweat" fuel and become limp as a wet noodle and consider that dangerous enough as they expand to the point where the clamps start cutting through the out jacket.

 

I suppose a drain cock could be installed in the cross-over pipe to remove the separated water (like an aircraft).

It would be easy on a 308, this wouldn't be feasible for every car.

 

YES! I think Tim has a very good idea! I haven't used my pilots license for a number of years, and totally forgot about purging the fuel tanks during preflight inspection. It would be really easy for someone to retrofit a new plug in the crossover pipe on the 308/328 series with a simple purge system. Also makes me think of how big a deal this is for general aviation aircraft, (aluminum tanks, fuel - water seperation, aircraft setting for weeks at a time) maybe the fuel suppliers only messed with car gas and left the avgas alone, in which case would this problem be solved if we ran avgas in the cars? When I was young and worked at an air charter co. I was constantly fueling corvettes and race cars with 100LL aviation fuel, although not very convenient. As important as this issue is with the Ferrari community it pales in comparison to the disastrous affects it would have on the aviation community. Maybe the answer lies with them?

 

Purge the tanks, hell we take daily fuel samples to check for debris and water, of course this is to see if we put in bad fuel, Because as your a pilot you know if you ferrari breaks down you pull to the side of the road if your plane breaks flames out a engine due to water you fall to the earth like a anvil.

Or in my case with helicopters we have the glide path of a anvil.


I personaly bought some hoses from peter before he was selling the kits as he was changing his lines.

Im not worried about my hoses and if you have any worries let it be the main hoses that the fuel toutches, I wouldnt tear out every single vapor line they will be fine, the supply hoses maybe but that would be it.

jp

 

I wish I had first hand knowledge of all of this but much of what I have learned is based on Govmnt. websites. From what I have read, the Aviation Industry has been able to keep the alcohol out of the air but have had to fight a battle to do so. The Private Pilots Admin. at least sounds like it is an on going problem. If there was alcohol in this fuel, there would be no reason to test for water as it would all be held in suspension and wouldnt be seen in a sample.

Pretty heavy fine for the airport if they are caught selling the AvGas for use in cars. The airports I used to get it from are no longer making it available. The next issue is it is leaded fuel, albeit low levels of lead and will foul the Cats. The Marine industry was screaming to get rid of the alcohol but lost. One of their biggest gripes is alcohol is hydroscopic and absorbs water and the boats have a tendency to operate in a rather "wet" enviroment...

With all of the momentum the Feds have using alcohol to crack the fuel supply, you can bet it is here to stay. With the research the U of M is doing regarding 20% levels you can give odds it is going to get worse long before it gets better. With the new administration coming in I suspect we will see hard line testing on emissions and be required to prove the cars are compliant. Who knows what we will be making fuel from in the future... I only hope it is made from Horse Shlt as that will give me a chance to retire some day and would take some of the sting out of buying $6/bale hay.

Pulling the plug on the cross over pipe is a humbling experiance and not a task one would look forward to but the idea has merit. I think we have to look towards preventing the seperation in the first place as this would then protect against multiple issues. I am not sure how one would market a Fuel Tank Vibrator and suggest it would likely make front page in the super market tabloids if one was designed. The product liabilty of selling a recirculation pump would be stagering but the design and install would be a simple affair for most cars and could be run on a timer to operate for 10 mins once every 2 weeks. Heck, maybe it is as simple as getting the car out for a 15 min drive once a month just to stir things up. I have always suggested against running the stored cars over the winter unless the oil gets up to operating temp for 15 mins to burn off the condensation but maybe we now have to rethink that and pick which is the worst evil. I am not smart enough to answer the question, I will leave that up to the owners to decide what is the right path. In Colorado we have enough nice weather stints to easily get the cars out. In Minnesota that is far more difficult due to the salt on the roads and there I had to use a plowed road on a frozen lake for my winter test drives. I still have to find the photo's of the GTO and TdF out breaking in new engines on a frozen lake back there!

One of the failure modes of the hose is that it goes stiff as a board once effected. I was able to hold a 5' length of 8mm hose at the very end and it would stick straight out like a broom handle. The effects of this once attached to the fragile aluminum hose nipples on the fuel tank and then subjected to vibration could have some ugly results. The hose engineers call this "wicking out the esters" and I am telling you the hose goes from 50% growth from what you put on the 20% smaller once it drys out. There is no screw clamp that will effectively retain hose in a clamped state under these conditions. I consider the vent hoses every bit as critical as those subjected to constant fuel as those swell but dont shrink as they dont dry out. One will drop the fuel down low if it fails completely, one will splash it on the headers and plug wires in the event of a total failure, No place to get complacent there!

I have given some long winded rants regarding this issue and for this I am sorry. I also have broken my own rules of posting a response only when I have educated and proven answers but this is something I wanted folks to know about before something bad happened. I could be full of hot air but I am dealing with these issues first hand and had to recall a number of cars back to the shop once I identified it just to do the whole job over again for free. I wasted a week on the phone with hose companies who all in the end just played CYA and suggested "if there was a problem, we would have heard about it". How about "You just did you damn fool" and I hung up the phone after getting his name and job title and suggesting he now holds the liabilty, not me. Folks can decide for themselves if it bears merit.

Dave

 

I know it's not the ideal solution but I would drain the tanks for the winter. All things considered this would also eliminate any damage to our already fragile aluminum tanks, yes?

In the warmer climates drive your car once every two weeks to keep things mixed up.

I am taking Dave's latest findings [so far] to my hose supplier tommorow so he can look into this from his end as well. To date I have only had a conversation with Dave which lacked the detail discussed in this thread. In my first conversation with Dave he recomended I change the supply hose at the very least to a marine grade and the crossovers were fine since they are already a marine grade hose. Once this is worked out I may opt out of the hose kit. Too many questionable fuel issues here. Let someone who has the deep pockets spend all of their time working this out...I am just a little guy trying to supply a simple kit. I never would have thought after all of my careful research into the right hose to supply that the fuels would start causing such a liability.

I also suggest those who have had their cars sitting for the past 3-4 weeks [or more] inspect the supply hose for degradation. Then report back to Dave your findings and if he agrees send a sample of the hose. I will supply an upgraded hose for your car as a replacement at cost. It's an easy task to undertake. If anyone needs to know the proceedure just PM me.

 

Hate to say it Peter, but you might want to get out of the Ferrari fuel hose business now! The liability issue is so great its not a matter of if you get sued, its when. IMHO, Don't offer to supply anything more and maybe notify the people in writing who puchased the kits of the problem. (I'm okay with where we are but others might want a refund)

 

Heck, I have no need to hear the findings or have hose samples...I have plenty of those right at the shop and payed to have them shipped all over the country with nothing as much as a thank you from the manufacturers.

In my first case, I had just installed a freshly cleaned fuel tank, bone dry. Replaced all the hoses and fabed steel lines while re converting an old Maserati from the carbs back to the Lucas FI. Brand new system throughout and bone dry and then went to the gas station and got 5 gals of fresh fuel to put in. While priming the system and inspecting it for leaks, 10 mins after the system went "wet" for the first time I noticed the straight sections of unsupported hose as short as 12"'s starting to sag and swell. Later that day the guy in thebuilding next door, who is restoring a 442 Olds came over just to pass the time and I told him of what I had just seen. He went next door and inspected his Olds that just went "wet" a week or two earlier and found the vent hose on the top of the tank swelled to bigger than his thumb and so limp it actually kinked due to its inability to hold its shape any longer. His hose was the same spec as mine but date coded 2 years earlier. Once replaced with SAE30R9 hose I no longer experianced the same issues with the same tank of fuel BUT...fool me once!!! When the hose manufacturer had no answers and gave the response they did that was enough for me. Let me assure you, I am not the one with deep pockets and surely cant afford to keep doing this type of thing. All of my customers are my friends and this presenting a safety issue is a situation I chose to make public and not keep a protected business secret.

Its been better than 2 months now since I sent their testing dept. cut open fuel filters, numerous hose samples including some of the Ferrari OEM cross over hose that I had replaced the same day that showed some of the same symtoms and many of their own hose samples. Not a word to date, no emails, no contact what so ever. Hows that for customer service?

I refuse to place the blame for this in any one area until I know more but I have expressed my thoughts and reasons for those. Further fuel testing will answer many more questions. The Jeep I drive everyday has lost a great deal of fuel economy when the winter blends came into the market. It is a well known fact that the winter blends include heavier consentrations of alcohol as it is an oxygenator and helps with lower emissions IF you can get the crap to burn. I am pretty concious of this as that rolling chicken coop is like a brick in the air stream and a slight change in the fuel shows a big change in the mileage.

All I can suggest is to read. Start with the Coast Guard sites regarding J-1527 hose and how it came to be. I saved so many websites that my computer finally crashed a day before we left on vacation. There is much data on this on the web and if you disregard the sites with something to sell and believe some of the independent testing labs reports and Govmnt sites you can learn a great deal. The biggest thing is to realize there is a problem, surely I never knew about it prior to my findings late this summer. Once folks have read all they want they can decide how to deal with it or ignore it all together. After all the SAE spec says its OK for fuel hose to swell a GREAT deal and still be OK. I find it troubling that fuel can permeate all the layers of hose intended to contain it.

Dave

 

I am leaning towards pulling out anyway. Too much grief for too little money [and trust me...it isn't much].

 

I appreciate the time and effort you are putting into this research. Makes leaving well enough alone sound like a good choice. LOL.

I have an off-topic question on the subject. I have a vintage hot rod. The fuel system is almost all steel and copper line, but a few short sections use rubber hose. Several years ago I replaced these sections with fuel injection hose (I don't use the low-pressure stuff at all). One section of the black rubber hose is visible. I was thinking of using the red-tinted clear hose, which would be period correct. This is a low-pressure system; 2-3 psi.

I wonder whether this hose would withstand today's fuels? For use in my hot rod, of course, not my 308.

On a side note, a couple of years ago I suffered a blocked pickup sediment screen in the fuel tank of the hot rod. This happened while on the road; my field expedient repair was to thread a small plastic inline filter onto about a foot of FI hose, spliced onto the pickup tube in the tank. The fix worked fine and I got home. And, since it was working, left it that way the rest of the season. A friend told me that this would not work for long, and that the FI hose would melt in the tank. Not so, I said, the hose doesn't care whether the gas is on the inside or the outside. You are mistaken, she said, they are different rubber. We'll see, I said.

Well, at the start of the next driving system I was not getting any fuel. Remembering my hack, I pulled the pickup. Just as predicted, the outside laminations of the FI hose were gone. What remained was a gummy mess, with intact cords and an inner section. I cleaned it out and built a better strainer out of fine copper mesh, which has proven to be bullet-proof. One moral of this story is that you do not contradict a woman.

Now, the same FI hose - from the same batch - that melted while submerged over the course of a few months has been in service quite nicely on the other fuel lines on my hot rod, for a couple of years before and after. Is this garden variety FI 5/16" or 3/8" fuel hose giving the problems you've described, or is it the larger sizes (that are not explicitly intended for modern fuel systems). I thought I read in this thread that the small vent hoses were giving problems too, and I imagine you were using fuel hose for these.

 

Inside liner and outside jacket are two totally different compounds on modern fuel hose, that bet was lost before the hose got wet. FI (R9) hose SHOULD work fine for the vent and supply applications if the fuel stays within reason. I have not had any problem with this (R9) hose yet but it is not available in the large sizes needed. As none of the makers is willing to tell me what alcohol consentration levels this has been tested to, I intend to go with overkill on all fuel hose applications after this.

 

OK.

Do you have any thoughts on that clear red hose?

I might get some just to see what, if anything, happens.

 

The cars have a hose that returns to the gas tank from the accumulator. I believe this is because the fuel pump runs at a constant presure while the engine's fuel requirement changes with thottle position. That would mean that at idle, when the least amount of fuel is needed, the accumulater would be returning gasoline to the tank and therefore circulating it. That would mean starting the car and letting it idle would be sufficent to prevent separation. Am I correct?

 

I would tend to agree, and the vibration combined with the circulation may just do the trick.

 

At this point I am upgrading all the new hose kits to include the R9 Fuel Injection hose and on the supply hose it will be a 5/8" Type A Marine Grade USCG approved hose. I am not making any recomendations on how to deal with the fuel issues discussed here...I am specing the hoses based on "normal" use. If one stores the car for anything over a few weeks I think it is prudent to drain the tanks...again...this is only a suggestion.

 

Curious about the moisture that is in the fuel.

Is this moisture that is already in the fuel at time of purchase (during the worst of the recent fuel price spike some stations were accused of adding water to their storage tanks to increase the volume, since the alcohol in the gas would keep it in suspension)? Moisture present in the cars tanks from condensation? Or moisture getting in thru a faulty vent system (system should be sealed, yes)?

And is the problem the laminar layer between the alcohol and gas, or the same when there is also moisture in the fuel?

 

Most of the moisture is a result of condensation for the large above ground storage tanks at the fuel depots I suspect.

In another life time I owned a Phillips 66 station in Minnesota (early 80's) and during the winter months would recieve 5-8000 gal fuel shipments on a Friday afternoon. That weekend I would remain closed to fuel sales and left the underground tanks settle and by Sunday evening I would pump the bottom of the tank out. Nothing short of 100-150 gallons of pure water would come out if the depots tanks were fairly full. If near empty it was much worse. The delivery tanker driver was supposed to put 5 gals of alcohol in when he was filling the truck but as a favor he would not do it when making a delivery to me as he knew I wanted it to seperate in my tanks.

What a racket it was back then, might still be. A magnetic sign would get slapped on the truck door that said Amoco/ Standard oil Co. when he had "some left over in the truck" and he would drive next door and top their tanks as the owner always had cash at hand. Back then there was no difference between Standard Oil and Phillips 66. Same truck, same tanks, same everything in Newport Mn. at the time but folks would swear one or the other was better.

From what I have read, the water in the alcohol makes the layer more corrosive. I have no proof of this but have seen this layer in my tests. It takes a good bit more effort for me to identify the extent of water suspended in the alcohol but is quite easy to test for how much alcohol is in the fuel. A quick call to B Wright (355 section) asking about how his Still in the back yard works and within mins. he emailed me his plans. Why did I know this good old southern boy would have answers to any questions about a Still?... It was at this point where I decided that I had enough problems just fixing cars and putting open flame to a beaker full of alcohol in the shop just to answer this question was better left to a Moonshine perfectionist such as Bruce and he was too busy sampling his own creations.

I will post a photo of this layer when I get to the shop for those that are curious as to how it looks. I found this research quite interesting and troubling at the same time. I only know enough about this to be dangerous but I also have some background pumping out underground fuel tanks laden with water that I just got done paying big money for. Little has changed in Nature so that water is still there, now its suspended in the fuel. Alcohol being hydroscopic might have increased the amount of water present, I just dont know.