cdiedrick

I have an 89 IROC and yesterday as I was waiting for a train, I smelled gas. Pulled the car over looked under the hood, saw no puddles then my wife says its pouring out back here. Sure enough, it was pouring out near the tank right to the inside of the rear wheel well. Honestly fuel scares the hell out of me, so I dropped it off at a mechanic and he won't touch it mostly due to the exhaust issue. (modified all welded) It was determined that the tank will need to be dropped in order to further diagnose and solve the problem. Now my car is 3 miles from my house, I have no mechanically inclined buds that can help this weekend. How hard is this? According to my Chiltons I need to drop my exhaust, sway bar, shocks, then the tank. Has anyone else ran into this. It does start harder now and I am losing so much gas while running that there are no drops, but a solid line of fuel on the ground. Maybe 20 ounces to a gallon is what I am losing in a minute.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2kflhr

iTrader: (1)

Have you screwed anything down in the hatch area immediatley behind the rear seat like an amp or something?
Theres no much clearance there ya know.

laydebug

2k is right....theres only about a 1/4 in. , if that, of clearance between the tank and the trunk. ur book is right, it does take all that to get the fuel tank out, but it really isn't all that difficult. it's not a 2 hour job, however. plan on spending at least the weekend with this job. good luck with it!

Pat Hall

iTrader: (31)

Just dropped and re-installed my tank last weekend to fix the gas gauge. It's not really a hard job to do, just time consuming. The hardest part will be how much you'll have to fight with your exhaust getting it removed. Luckily, I used band clamps on mine and copper anti-seize on all the connections, so it came apart pretty easy. If yours is all welded, I guess it's time to get out the hacksaw. Jack up the rear of the car as high as you can get it. Remove the rear wheels, undo the lower end of the shocks, remove panhard bar, and the brace above it, all the exhaust from the cat back, undo the endlinks to the rear sway bar, remove both rear coil springs. I put a set of jackstands under the rear frame rails right in front of the trailing arms, and then use a floor jack to lower the rearend down slowly. I also undid the 13 mm bolt that holds the center brake line bracket on the driver's side framerail. This allows more slack in the brake line so you can lower the rearend far enough. Once you get all this done, unplug the three prong sending unit harness, disconnect the fuel lines, and the two tank strap bolts. To get the tank out, you have to lower it and twist it at the same time to finagle the filler neck out of the hole in the frame rail. It took me about six hours to do mine, using air tools, and taking lots of smoke breaks. It's a lot of disassembly, but none of it is hard to do. Oh yeah, there's also a couple of thin, metal shields above the muffller attached with 7 mm bolts you have to remove to get to the tank. Good luck!

cdiedrick

I really hated doing this, but I took it to a mechanic. i expect a $500 bill but I had no ambition to lay under that car for a day and deal with seized parts since I have to air tools. Why is it that my car is a "project car", not meaning that a fixer upper but always needs something fixed. oh well

2kflhr

iTrader: (1)

Like I told my son, anything mechanical can break new or old. Even new cars still require repair from time to time.