Life is full of choices. And with those choices come consequences, both good and bad. If you make a good decision, you will be rewarded. But if you make a bad one, you can chalk that up as a life lesson.
A year or two ago, during the height of the pandemic, as you probably know, parts were extremely tough to get. As luck would have it, we were knee-deep in an engine swap and needed some fuel hose to finish up the installation. The problem was that no one had any name-brand fuel hoses in stock. So, thinking we needed this product now, we decided to place an order on Amazon. While this seemed like a solid idea, this choice had dire consequences.
When we pulled the first line off, the hose looked like it might have been rubbing on the intake. However, we had a more serious problem.
A couple of weeks ago, I headed out to start the vehicle. I hit the ignition, and the cammed engine fired right up as usual. After that, however, something was different. The engine didn’t sound right, and I immediately smelt fuel. I shut the truck off, popped the hood, and scrambled to see where the issue originated. We haven’t messed with the vehicle for a while, and I didn’t suspect any hoses were loose. However, much to my surprise, fuel poured off the intake onto the headers, which were fortunately not hot yet.
We narrowed the fuel leak down to a hose that connects the fuel pressure regulator to the fuel rails. We removed the hose, built another, and replaced the failing unit. I thought to myself, this is surely a fluke, and the hose was rubbing somewhere. So we pressured up the system, and all was well. The new hose was holding firm. However, much to my dismay, we fired up the truck, and now another leak had developed. Fuel was now pouring down the back of the engine and transmission from a different hose.
We used a razor blade to cut through the braid on the “Amazon” hose to get to the problem.
At this point, we could see the writing on the wall. So, we removed all fuel lines to figure out what was happening. From there, we peeled back the first layer of the Amazon “braided fuel hose” to discover a tiny hole. When I posted my findings the other day on LSX Mag’s Facebook page, people quickly pointed out that “the hoses were assembled improperly!” However, I can assure you, after working for a nitrous company for years, I have built more fuel and nitrous lines than 95 percent of the population. But I digress. We found the problem, which was much worse…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at DragzineDragzine…