i jus reconnected the 4 metal lines with rubber hose. however i just realized the 2 smaller lines (ones in between the 2 bigger lines) are mixed up. but the car ran normally for about 10 minutes like this. i was about to go outside again to fix the lines but am wondering if its really necessary or can i just leave them as is? what are these lines for? thanx

 

Yes fix them.

And you should double clamp those rubber hoses. on the feed and return line.


-- Joe

 

The one, the only reason you ever need to know that you shouldn't do it that way. Double clamp them. You did use 'high pressure f/i' hose right?

 

got 'em fixed. i used regular fuel line hose. didnt know they sold the high pressure type.

 

Make sure your lines are suitable for high pressure (EFI) applications. Many of the off-the-shelf kind are for carb'd cars so the burst pressure is relativly low. Much lower than that of what a TPI setup puts out.

 

Yep - use "fuel injection hose", a couple of bucks more, but well worth it from a safety point. And all the local shops carry it here, right next to the little boxes of the carb hoses....

 

And that would be reason number two.

I would avoid driving that car until you got the proper hose onto it. Safety and all that... though I don't want to know how well any hose would stand up if your car get rear ended with any force.

 

A hell of a lot better than hard line. Which is why GM now uses flex hose thats almost iimpossible to snap.

-- Joe

 

Flex hose tubing and some rubber line clamped onto hard line with no rolled lip are two very, very different things Joe. Stop poking and keep my spouting in context.

 

Get the right hose. If not you might regret it later... RD is right...

 

Heh.

Personally, I think he's gonna blow himself up. But we've covered this topic a million times. If he can't search, than so be it.


-- Joe

 

assumptions assumptions

looks like this site hasnt changed one bit...

 

Well you used regular fuel hose, you didnt flare the ends a little. What do you expect?


-- Joe

 

^What he said. That was reason number two. :shrug:

 

Did you really cut the floor and lines up to get to the fuel pump? Its so easy to drop the tank and r/r it.

 

if it was easy i wouldnt have done it. i know first hand what its like to drop the suspension, exhaust, rear end, tank, etc.

 

I actually prefer the access hatch method. Once the mod is done, you can do pumps easily. But mine has fittings on it, and a "door".


-- Joe

 

I remember doing mine and it taking an afternoon. Thinking what was the big deal that everyone made about doing it. My exhaust has a joint in it were it runs over the axle. So its easy to pull apart.

Seems like it would have to be a big hole to get the hard lines out of the tank.

IM not trying to give you a hard time, its just i would hate to cut up my car like that. Ive seen your car and its nice. I live in Clearwater. I would have given you a hand. Orlando is only an hour or so away.

Glad you got it going though.

 

thanx man. yea i used to always say i would never cut up my car like that. well nowadays i just dont have the time to do that job over again. but i dont regret doing it. im the only one that knows the hole is there.

here's a pic in case someone does the almighty search one day and needs to see one. but obviously this hose selection and clamping method is not recommended. also it woulda been a lot easier if i had cut the lines close to the bends than the pump.

 

um how about a pic of how you sealed it back up ????

 

havent gotten to that yet. just plan on screwing a piece of thin metal over it.

 

Cut out a piece of hard metal to cover the hole then drill small holes around the perimiter and the floor then just use rivets to make it nice and tight.. Spread a gasket maker around the perimeter as well before you tighten the rivets..

.

 

Actually, I prefer using GM body bolts and clips, and a soft 3M foam gasket. 3 bolts on each short side, 4 on each long side. Tighten it up and its better than OEM.

-- Joe

 

For those of you that have allready done this mod, how difficult is it to pull the fuel pump assembly out of the car with the hole cut. The reason I ask, is that the pump always seems to take a little monuvering to remove even if the tank is on the ground. I am thinking of doing this while I am POR15ing the entire under body. I am going to take and cut an almost perfect circle slightly larger than the pump assembly it self. I just want to see if it is fairly easy or a little more difficult than if the tank were on the ground. Obviously I will be cutting the lines too.

Thanks
Rob

 

Somewhat off topic. Never understand why GM didn't put a short hose on the fuel filler neck next to the tank. Make that job so much easier to pull the tank straight down.

 

You mean like most other vehicles have a hard filler pipe and a soft hose to connect the pipe to the tank. Well I gues the GM cars and engineers are "Like a Rock'', I.E. Their hard headed.

 

pretty easy tryin to take it out. it does take a lil work but nothing more than if the tank was on the floor. the hardest part for me was tryin to clamp all the lines b/c i made the mistake of cuttin them each at almost the same spots so i had very little room to work with.

Edit: mine was easy to take out cuz of the size hole i made. guessing would be more difficult if the hole is only slightly larger than the pump.

 

Were I to do the trap door method, I'd take the lined, housing et al to a tubing place or marine place and have then shaped for quick connects, or I'd flare them myself and connect them with correct braided hoses. :shrug: But I still drop the tank.

 

Yup dropping the tank is the proper and safe way to do this not hacking up your car to save time I guess the next time we will start seeing guys cutting up thier firewalls to change heater cores or cutting a hole in the hood and putting a gas door on it so they dont have to pop the hood to check the oil ...

 

Hey!! That's a great idea! Sell the marine covers so it looks ric<c>e... er... cool!! Yea! I'm gonna get on that right away!

 

Why in the world would you want to destroy your car by cutting a hole in the floor??? I can drop the tank out my 82 TA in less than a 1/2 hour, on the garage floor, using hand tools, by myself. Nothing gets destroyed, and it gets done right. Well, I know of one more thing to look for when I buy another one of these cars....Holes cut in the floor!!!!!

 

Really! I'll make sure to check under the carpet before I buy another f-body!

You think there is a reason that GM didn't put a hole there? How much do the body of these cars flex? Why do you think there are so many different subframe connectors available? A rectangular hole, even if cut and covered expertly, will cause cracks over time. These are unibody cars, so you are cutting into what is, for all intents, the frame of the car!

And if you don't seal the hole good. You could get exhaust gases in the passenger space. Not good!

 

Ever check out trap doors on drag cars?

-- Joe

 

GM didn't put a trap door for the same reason GM didn't do a lot of things the other companies did. Like provide brakes that actually stop the car, an engine that is actually efficient and high output, power windows that don't take a week to go up or down, t-tops that don't leak or rattle, an exhaust routing that makes sense, etc.

-- Joe

 

My car came with a hole and It made the fuel pump swap MUCH easier. I dont see what the big deal is. The only thing that makes me uncomfortable is trusting clamps to keep the fuel from leaking.

I run about 47psi with a afpr and have not had any problems since I boosted the pressure 1 year and 5k miles ago.

I still plan on doing a better job sometime by flaring the ends of the line and using a connection that can screw together with O rings, kind of like how the fuel filter goes together.

 

The ideal situation is to flare them, to seal the door, etc.

I suggest you take a trip to the junkyard, and look at how some other companies (nissan for example) does it.

-- Joe

 

Like my employer (Caterpillar), GM is in business to make money, not make their product easy to work on. You should see all the tools in my box at work that I have had to modify to be able to work on a backhoe. At Cat each engineer works on their own system and doesn't check to see how it fits with other systems once the macine is built. long term reliability isn't an issue either. Just get it through the warranty period.

Yes. GM could have put a door there to get to the fuel pump. But that would increase the cost of the body, take longer to build each body, etc. etc. etc....It is all a compromise...what is the benefit to the customer compared to our cost...trap door loses and so does the customer whose fuel pump just died...

 

Okay here we go again .....if you look at how nissan did it for example their trap door would have been installed in the car before they were crash tested and the engineers would have designed it in the car way before the last part of the assembly line it would have to have been tested and retested to make sure it was okay but then again what do i know you must be way smarter than all those engineers at the other car companies i guess....

 

IS the car a 9 sec drag car? Then it doesnt need a door. Comparing a thirdgen with minor mods to a drag car is stupid. If you were concerned with needing to change a pump at the race track, why wouldnt you install a nice in line external pump? I'll tell you why, cause people who do this are lazy and dont want to do the damn job in the first place.

 

You have yet to prove they rear crash test them with the trap door in mind.

I ran into one of your buddines the other day in IRC. We had a interesting coversation.

 

Because inline external pumps overheat, and often fail. Duh!

Why is comparing minor mods to a drag car "stupid" ? Because you said so?

-- Joe