Has anyone cut the filler neck to make the tank easier to get in and out? I was thinking about doing it and then using a rubber tube and two hose clamps to re-connect the filler tube. This would make the tank 10 times easier for me to get back in. Is this something thats doable or not recommended? I know my truck has this stock so I dont see why you wouldnt be able to do it. The car in question is an 84 z28. I have the tank out just wanting to make it easier to put in since I dont have a car lift.

 

Just my opinion.....

I wouldn't recommend doing it. But then I'm not one to cut holes just to get to the fuel pump either. Once the filler neck is cut, there's nothing supporting the top end of the neck other than the rubber hose.

If you live in a locale that has vapor return fuel nozzles at the filling station I can imagine it would be difficult to get the nozzle to "catch" onto the threaded neck to get the fuel to flow. Unless you want to stand there and push and hold the nozzle in while you fill up - I actually fill up this way. Just because I'm paranoid that hanging the nozzle off that long neck will fracture the neck/tank joint like my original tank did.

It really isn't very hard to R&R the fuel tank. Just time consuming. I've done it a few times just crawling around on the ground with the car on jack stands. Dropping the rear axle to get it out of the way helps a lot.

 

Having done that once on a Dodge Neon I owned years ago, I wouldn't recommend it. It may be easier to get the tank back in now, but sliding the rubber coupler in place and tightening the band clamps will involve more work and swearing than its worth.

 

I realize id lose the support but I would make sure the two necks are touching and the rubber piece would hold them together. Also I could fabricate and bolt up a bracket for it if needed.

As for the vapor return im not sure what youre talking about. Im in Michigan and all you have to do is stick the nozzle in and start pumping.

And theres plenty of room around the filler neck when installed to tighten the hose clamps. Im not worried about that.

I just know how much of a pain it was getting it out and the filler neck was the main issue. If I was able to disconnect it from the tank it would have fallen right out. Itll be so much easier getting the tank back in with the neck removed.

 

I cut mine and put a rubber neck on the end. It works fine. You leave the neck and clamps on the tank and put in as a whole. The neck will be somewhat flexible which makes the installation or removal much easier.

 

Where did you get your rubber piece at?

 

Your local auto parts will have several size rubber filler necks specifically for gas. Just cut it to the length you want. Don't' use standard rubber hose, it wont' hold up to the fuel.

 

IDK, MY OPINION ONLY..........BUT, if the car was high enough, and the axle removed, two guys could of had that in.

Now on the other hand, being you fought so much to REMOVE it, you might want to check the filler neck to tank weld and make sure you didn't crack it!!! A real common area that cracks. Just say'n and good luck!

 

I can check it but i doubt its cracked. The tank itself is in great shape. But it had sat for 15-20 years so i wanted to get all the old gas out. And yes it wouldve been easier with two people but i dont have anyone to help me. My main issue was i didnt have enough clearance between the body of the car and the axle. Had crawl out from under the car a couple times to re-jack the car up and i wasnt sure how high i could go with it before snapping brake lanes.

 

Yeah, best thing to do is to remove the wheels and calipers off the axle and drag that outta there.

 

I dont think removing the axle is necessary. Sure it would make a lot of room but the time spent doing that i dont think would be worth it. Theres plenty of room to jack the car up and make enough clearance between the axle and body. Just my opinion i guess.

 

I turned the tank with the front edge down, lifted it and stabbed the filler neck through the filler neck shield and then rotated the tank back to horizontal.

Doing it this way I had to drop the rear axle in order for the tank to clear the differential when rotating it from vertical to horizontal.

Again, I'd rather just drop the axle. Cutting the filler neck off a perfectly good tank is like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

It's your car and your neck so do whatever you think is necessary.

 

Also some of the newer EFI tanks have another tube in the neck that you won't be able to reconnect.
While it is done that way from the factory on certain LS 4thgen tanks, they were engineered for it.
I just tossed a perfectly good 1LE tank because someone cut the neck. (now I have a good neck and bad tank that I could have made 1 good tank.. ugh)
My vote is no, don't do it..

 

I realize you can do all the twisting and turning to get it back in (what i had to dick with to get it out) but why make it harder on yourself? Cut the neck and it will fit right in no issues. Also this is an 84 so no EFI.

 

FWIW when I changed my fuel pump I was advised to bend the neck a little on removal to make it easier to get out, then when reinstalling use a long screwdriver or jackhandle down the filler tube to straighten it back out. That was Bruce at Hawks advising. It worked great but I would probably still be under the car fighting it if he hadn't reassured me it would work.

 

I've done two of these on my '88 and '91 base. I've found that getting the tank "in" is easier than getting it out. If you got it out, you already have the clearance. Good luck.

 

I did end up cutting the neck. I tried getting it back in without and it was just being a pain in the rear. In went in like butter after the neck being cut. I got a rubber filler neck hose from the auto store, i got the kind that has metal rings in it so its stiffer. It worked out just fine. I left the one side (not connected to the tank) out until the tank was in. Then that piece just goes in easily with plenty of room. And the only clamp I had to tighten was on the tank side and I could get the air wrench in there to do that. I personally think it was a good idea and saved me a bunch of time and will save time later if it ever needs to come out again.

 

So on March 23rd you asked if it would be a good idea to cut the neck off the tank to make it easier to install??

OK........

Glad it went smooth for you.

 

Not sure what you're confused about. I cut the neck and installed the tank two days ago. I havent had time to work on this every day, work and life gets in the way. I posted it up to see if anyone had done it before and to make sure it was something that was even possible to do.

 

Sad to hear, good luck with it.

 

I agree with TTOP350 that cutting it was the wrong way to go . Literally hundreds of thousands of these tank replacements must have happened since these cars began to be sold , and I'll wager darned few ended up with the neck cut off .

I hope you at least dressed the cut ends so as to not have a sharp edge cutting the rubber coupling from the inside out ?

Also , I'd be curious as to the potential danger of static electricity build up now that the pipe is electrically insulated from the car ? At the fender end , it mounts in the plastic bucket , so no connection there . But at the tank end , the metal pipe being soldered to the metal tank provided for the fact that the pipe would always be grounded to the car . Now that you have cut this and joined it with rubber (metal reinforced or not , it's still rubber in contact with the pipe) it is insulated . Weird things of the static electricity variety can happen when fluids (like gasoline) are pushed through conductive pipes that are insulated from each other . As I recall , all cars that used to use the rubber couplings from the factory had the fender end of the pipe bolted electrically solid to the car .

I'd be making provisions for grounding that electrically "floating" piece of pipe before some unfortunate "just right" set of conditions makes a real unpleasant experience of putting gas in it ....

PS , for reference , you may want to search out the grounding requirements for fueling aircraft . Those guys have a really good grip on the whole grounding as a means of fire prevention while fueling and their principles are sound . If everything is grounded , there can be no static buildup (difference of electrical potential) between the various components , and thus no fire causing spark .

 

Bringing this back from the dead.
I'm still wondering why so many members have been against removing a portion of the fuel filler neck and replacing it with a semi-flexible fuel filler hose. It appears that the fourthgen tanks used a similar approach:




Doing this would also prevent the dreaded cracking at the base of the neck that causes the horrible raw gas smell. I have inadvertently cracked at least one tank from all of the wiggling, jiggling, pulling and tugging.

I'm not sure if I buy into the theory of needing to ground our tank. We have three (or in my case 2) lines that must ground themselves to the body in multiple places through the multiple metal clips that run between the tank and the flexible lines up front.

I'm debating this because I have a fuel smell that I am fairly certain is another cracked neck. I'll have to drop it and resolder it and am considering removing a few inches of filler neck so I can literally just drop the tank and never worry about the solder joint again. This would be the second tank that has cracked on me.

 

Maybe what you should be asking is why GM felt the filler neck should be a permanent part of the tank. Plenty of GM vehicles use a coupler. Stands to reason they had a good reason to use the one piece assembly.

 

ALOT of vehicles use that; not just GM, and not just cars. Mostly newer than ours. Might have been some kind of regulations back then, or maybe they just didn't have rubber that they thought was good enough. Although, it's been in boats FOREVER, where fuel vapors are a MUCH more serious matter than cars, but gas tanks also assemble into the vehicle much differently.

That said, vehicles equipped that way, ALSO have the top piece, on the opposite end from the rubber, BOLTED in place securely to something. Can't recall our cars being that way. I don't have any problems myself with a rubber line coupler, but I wouldn't want my filler and gas cap and all that just waving around in the breeze like a limp ... yeah.

 

Since this was brought back from the dead I figured I should reply. The car I posted about was/is my step dads car. He passed away from cancer a few years before I posted this. As posted before I did cut the filler neck and used a metal reinforced rubber filler hose to reconnect the two filler neck pieces. I havent had any issues with filling it but that has just been done with a gas can. I couldnt talk my mom into transferring the title to her name so we could get it licensed and insured to drive it anywhere. Its still sitting in the garage right now. I have talked mom into giving me the camaro luckily since she is moving this summer. I had it running but I think theres an issue with the starter or the cables now.

I dont think cutting it was a bad idea. Made removal and installing 10 times easier without having to entirely remove the axle.


My step dad had the car since he was a kid and it became his project car. He wanted to re-paint it and fix some dents it had and fix minor issues with the motor. Well life and cancer got in the way and it sat for a while. We got a hold of a friend of ours who put it back together for us and repainted it. I got it back to running with a new gas, changing the fuel pump, and it needed a new radiator. Anyways, below is the car- 84 z28 with aftermarket convertible top. 80,000 miles

 

I was going to suggest the same thing. I have a 4th gen tank in my car and I just had to replace the pump module, having the 4th gen tank made the R&R so much easier and faster than when I had a 3rd gen tank. Being on a lift made it even easier.

 

My question is why are you guys taking the tank in and out so much lol!

I will agree if it had come from the factory with a rubber section it would be a lot easier to work on. I did mine by myself by removing the shocks and supports then supporting the rear end with a floor jack. Took me a while to get it in and out, but it can be done!

 

I've owned thirdgens for the last 16 years now and my experience has been that once you break 300 hp the stock style pumps be they Walbro, Holley or GM only last a few years. Yes, I have done more than my fair share of "by the book" fuel pump replacements. I'm also removing the tank this time since it is giving the symptoms of a cracked fuel filler neck joint. If the issue of cracked joints at the fuel filler neck is so important GM had to put out a safety recall and I'm pulling the tank (yet again) I would like to use a solution that dramatically reduces the possibility of the neck joint cracking again. It seems that using a short coupler (something like 6") would fit the bill.

 

That tank looks familiar LOL... Also, I see no reason why your suggestion would not work!

 

Also, that 4th gen fuel tank had a smooth filler neck outlet to connect the hose. The hose does have a bracket to secure it. If you cut the third gen tank neck, it will have "grooves". Since I just put the 4th gen tank in, I had the third gen tank laying around and snapped a pic of it with the measurements of 2.25" o.d. for your reference. I'd just swap to a fourth gen tank and be done with it Of course, you'd have to plumb and wire it.

 

Is the filler neck on a third gen just a single pipe from the filler mouth, all the way to where it dumps into the reservoir of the tank?

I know there's that little flappy thing right at the filler mouth. But, isn't the flappy thing there just to prevent you from inserting a too-large (incorrect fuel) nozzle, and also to work as sort of a a backsplash valve?

If there is no "pipe-within-a-pipe" issues, its just a glorified gas can. Modify it to suit youself.

But that's my question --- and at the risk of exposing myself as ignorant as hell:

IS THERE a "pipe-with-a-pipe" with these tanks?

 

I want to know that if I chop the neck of a new tank I won't encounter anything that looks like this.

 

The flap at the end is just a dust barrier, or maybe to prevent fuel that may be in the neck from coming up while the pressure in the tank equalizes after you take the cap off. The actual hole would prevent you from inserting one of the large diesel nozzles.