You know two summers ago I decided to replace my fuel
Filter and clean up my sump gas tank (thanks to reading
James Love web site recommendations by the way).
I’ve noticed the past couple of days , as I’m driving, fuel
Smells in the cabin . Not your normal fuel smells but fresh
Fuel smells! ( WTF) ? I though I visited this dog and pony
Show umpteen times before. Anyway I pulled out spare
wheel, stuck my nose in there and had a strong smell from
The new fuel filter. I noticed the secondary fuel connection
Hose had backed off. I’m thinking am I a moron or whats
going on here. I poked the hose connection with my finger
and gas started spewing every where. I’m thinking how
could I have been so stupid to not tighten the Jubilee
Clip properly. No problem I’ll grab my handy screw driver
and retighten after I push it back onto the fuel filter barb
I got no more than two turns and the sucker slipped back.
I seemed like it was stripped. Moral of the story
, check your fuel hose line connections once in a while. May save yourself a potential catastrophic event.
so what is the final outcome… did you get it fixed
Yah it was simple, it was the jubilee clip, was tightening
To a certain point and if I turned the screw it was
Ratcheting like it was stripped or something.
Fortunately I had bought a bag of various sizes recently.
The trick was just to cut the old one off and undo the new
one as I wasn’t prepared to remove the filter and have
Gas spraying everywhere under pressure.
I was surprised, I’ve just never seen one strip and back itself
like this before . Live and learn.
For connections that I’ll never remove again unless I replace the hose, I use oetiker clamps. I understand the fuel filter needs two clamps that can easily be removed, so I always buy the expensive stainless steel ones from Napa and never had a problem. I HAVE had those worm drive clamps stop working, but it’s usually when I’ve reused them several times.
Since fuel filter only needs replacing every 2 years or so, I just use new clamps.
Good points, it’s funny when I replaced my original filter
I swear it was in the car since day one. I replaced it with
The one James Love recommend on his website.
The orange cruddy gas that poured out of the filter
Surprised me that the car even ran. I cleaned the surge
Tank and replaced that filter at the time. I went out and
bought a couple of big cow magnets and stuck them
At the bottom of each tank. Which also reminds I want
To buy a new Bosch fuel pump.
Scary thing is I could have been driving along fat, dumb and
happy and that hose could have popped off with my
Trunk being filled with gasoline. It had backed off about
1/4” when I started smelling the gas leak. I’ll have to check
The make of the stainless steel clamps. They’re your
standard issue from my local Canadian Tire store.
Yes, very glad you discovered it! I’ve had a few cases like this. That’s why I now triple check my work sometimes.
Speaking of fuel leaks, I replaced and tweaked my fuel level sender. The rubber seal and locking washer don’t seem to be good for several uses. I recommend buying new ones. Very cheap insurance. Because you secure it with a low tank, you can’t tell if you’ve got it sealed correctly until you fill up your tank!
Yeah one fuel thing that absolutely freaked me out was when … again, I was trying to find out where the smell was coming from , … and being new to the XJS I was very curious about all the different fittings and hoses in the trunk …… removing the lower black tin sheet I came face to face with sump tank and found the goldfish 2-3” filler cap with two lugs on very interesting. I realized it had to be a screw in fit. So like the daring adventurer I tapped it loose with a hammer and screwdriver and carefully lifted the hose, removing the cap … Absolute horror when gasoline spewed out into the trunk under pressure … even more horror when I tried to screw the cap back on, but couldn’t because of the precise fit and the awkwardness of gasoline pouring out, preventing me from fitting the tabs back together exactly, like some kind of a lock on an intricate bank vault … I really got scared when gasoline emptied out of the breather grommets and onto the garage floor making quite a puddle. Yes that was probably my scariest time ever … I had to act totally cool fitting what seemed like a precise NASA like component back together without moving suddenly or causing a spark from tools or scraping the battery terminals etc … I was in shock for a while afterwards
I’m almost thinking after this last little episode to methodically
Go through and swapping out all my easily accessible
Worm drive hose clamps with the T bolt type.
They seem to give a lot better even compression
without damaging or leaving crimp marks on the hose.
They seem to look a lot more professional as well.
Quality worm drive clamps are fine brand new. I get the kind that are flat on the inside so the hoses don’t get pinched.
The Tbolts are a bit over the top, imo. I only use them for Turbo hoses where you need a very very tight clamp over oily hoses but you don’t want to pinch the rubber or poly.
The last time I replaced hoses I purchased a supply of Norma worm drives. Good clamps.
I know I’m going on here about a stupid little thing like
A hose clamp, but when you think about the possibilities
Of fuel and/or cooling on these cars that come down to
A 59 cent part , we should recommend to new members
The quality ones from the crap, so going forward we can
Fuel fires and overheating coolant issues.
Just need good clamps to evenly distribute pressure not
Crimp or cut or mar hoses.
By the way where’s Kirby? I will defer to his comment here
As well.