update on my GL

[norcal505]

always a treat to see what you're up to andré. do you think that you'll be able to bring it out to this year's meet?

best,

sina

[my3AWDgst]

Great stuff man.

[Bean]

That's the same line that my N9TEA has from the fuel pump to the hard line under the car... Good to know... Do you happen to know if the tubing is rated to handle diesel?

Quite a bit nicer than high pressure fuel line with clamps, but then again mine is hidden under the car, and out of sight.

Rabin

[Peugeottogo]

Andre', always a pleasure to read your posts with progress regardless how long between your updates.

Always an interesting topic or task your working on

[andrethx]

thanks for the positive feedback, guys, it really helps! working on part 2 this weekend.

@rabin, according to the cohline catalog, the answer is "yes" -- this line is rated for diesel.

andré

[andrethx]

new fuel line fabrication, part 2

this step involves putting the swivel fitting & compression nut on the side of the fuel line(s) that attaches to the fuel injector.

first step is to cut the line to proper length. when i first started doing this a few days back, i left myself a lot of extra line in case i messed up and had to cut the mistake off -- if you don't line everything up properly, it's possible to insert the fitting into the line crookedly, which i'm sure doesn't help fuel flow and probably weakens the line. once i got the hang of this process, my mistake rate went down to virtually zero so i was able to cut things more closely. the thicker line that you see there is my template.

the next step is to put the compression nut on the line -- this must go on before the swivel fitting for obvious reasons! otherwise, you have to cut the swivel fitting off and re-do everything.

next, we add a bit of motor oil to the swivel fitting barbs to help things along. very light application, not much is needed.

next, i put everything into the fuel line repair tool as before:

this was actually easier to do than the banjo fittings, because there were fewer barbs on this fitting and also because i knew what i was doing by now.

here's the finished product:

and here are the four completed lines:

i used blue painter's tape to label the lines before installation. my original factory lines had small rubber number bands on them (NLA), haven't yet figured out a good way to replicate that. the two options i've looked at and rejected are spark plug wire label bands (too big for this application) and poultry leg bands (not intended to be fuel-safe). still working on this....

step 3 will be the other engine compartment fuel lines.

andré

[Bean]

Awesome - thanks Andre. Once my TD is in the garage getting worked on I may have to recisit this.

I just bought some cloth covered German fuel line that's supposed to be very good for diesel so we'll see how that works out first.

I have a feeling some rigid plastic lines would have a tidier look...

Rabin

[andrethx]

new fuel line fabrication, part 3

i did a few more engine compartment fuel lines, there are a couple more so i guess that'll be part 3.5

the assembly of these lines was exactly like before, it's just a matter of cutting the correct size line to length and choosing the correct fittings. i've gotten to the point where i don't screw these up at all, so i can cut my tubing to length the first time without having to leave a bunch of extra length of tubing for errors.

this time, i made the line that goes between the fuel distributor and the cold start valve. i also made the two larger lines that run between the fuel distributor and the hard fuel lines that run into the engine compartment by the steering column (the supply and return lines):

a couple of notes on the supply and return lines -- you'll notice that the tubing is a different color...this is what my supplier had on hand, if i had wanted the black i would have had to order a very large amount from him (i.e., his minimum purchase) and waited for it to get here from germany. as it is, the tubing i got is the right type and the right size, so it's really a matter of aesthetics...also, the fitting that goes on these lines on the fuel-line side are extremely hard to find; it is male threaded in a rare size (12x1.0 metric) to match the female threads on the compression nut (that is set behind the flare on the hard fuel lines). all my other fittings up to this point have been new and i would like to find a replacement for these fittings, but i have been unable to find them up to this point so i reused the old ones (after cleaning them up). i will continue to look for replacement fittings going forward, but i'm happy with the way these turned out.

andré

[andrethx]

spent some quality time under the car this afternoon...no pics of that, sorry, i had my hands full! i was removing the rigid fuel lines so i can clean them inside and out. everything on the underside of my car is filthy with a combination of grease and dirt, including the fuel lines. the front of the rigid fuel lines are attached with a little metal plate that is held on by a bolt and a nut...looks like this:

i couldn't get a socket & ratchet onto the nut because the steering column was in the way, so i had to use a combination wrench (10mm). the threads on the nut were all grimed up so i couldn't unscrew the nut by hand, even after i had broken it free...i had to use the wrench the whole way, "chasing" the grime out of the threads. it took a while, but i got it. i ended up completely filthy...there is definitely an art to positioning one's self when working on your back, such that you don't get debris falling on you....

in the next day or two i will clean the rigid lines, lots of photos then.

andré

[andrethx]

had a bit of time early this afternoon so i cleaned the first rigid fuel line. the outside was covered with a thick layer of road tar, so i gathered together my cleaning materials:

a metal and a nylon brush, some shop rags, gloves, very fine steel wool and brake part cleaner. i poured the cleaner into the aluminum pan and cleaned a section at a time. i started with the brushes but quickly found that the steel wool worked much better. took about 20 minutes. when i first started, the line looked like this:

when i was done, it looked like this:

you may notice that in the first picture, there is a flexible line connected to the back of the rigid line; this flexible line connects to the fuel pump/accumulator assembly under the car. i removed that line before i started cleaning:

lastly, i blew out the inside of the rigid line with compressed air. i wrapped blue tape around the tip of my air nozzle so that i would get a snug fit on the end of the rigid line. i blew it out from both sides, it was clear.

lastly, i made up a new flexible line for the back of this rigid line (to replace the one i had removed). once again, i reused the fitting from this line (after cleaning it).

in addition to making a few more lines, i need to gather a couple of more items to refinish the fuel tank inside & out. it's currently in my garage, sandblasted clean and taking up space...

andré

[Bean]

If I were you I would keep all the old metal fittings and see if you can find somewhere that offers a CAD plating service. I have friends that bead blast fasteners on race cars, then send them for CAD plating before install. Hardware looks new when they get it back. Replating isn't necessary of course - but if you found a good source for providing the plating service for a resonable cost - why not.

Write up was top notch as usual too, and I love the level of detail you're going too on each part. I get the same satisfaction when working on my cars, and I'm really looking forward to doing that level of work on the 89' once I have a chance to sort it out properly in the garage, and the work isn't rushed.

Rabin

[andrethx]

thank you for the kind words, rabin! i like to go into detail and use lots of pictures because i enjoy it, also because it might help someone else in the future if they decide to do this stuff. furthermore, with a detailed writeup, if i screw up somewhere along the way, the more mechanically experienced forum members can catch my mistakes....

i like the idea of cad plating, i found a few places around here that do it but they do it in batches; the place i will be using showed me a box and said, "we will do a box that size for US$100, whether it's packed full or nearly empty." so i am accumulating pieces to be plated (keeping notes & photos on where they go!), my box is currently about 1/3 full. my goal right now is to get my car on the road this summer so i can bring it to the next meet-up (whenever that is), so i just cleaned the fittings and used them as-is. i have lots of extra line so i may simply re-do the lines with the NLA fittings if i can't find those fittings somewhere else before i send everything off to be plated.

btw -- this is my 1,000th post! it seem like only yesterday i was telling people how to find the distributor on their diesel 505s....

andré

[Bean]

Congrats on the 1000th post! A while back I noticed Sina had more posts than me so I had to kick it up a notch...

Cool to hear about the box of parts - I'd love to find the same deal as I hard metric fasteners off cars like crazy- it'd be nice to go through and fill up a box to get re plated for future use. Local guy my friends have been using on their race cars has upped his price to the point that it's just not worth it and they can just buy new. Not a big issue for them, but for these cars that like to use 1.00 and 1.25 fine thread on everything - much harder to come across at the bolt shops...

Once I start working on the TD and even my Turbo - I may have to solicit your fuel building skills as my rubber hose fix I documented a while back was a good temp measure, but a proper solution would be nicer. It's either using proper line like you did - or look at steel braided with proper crimp fasteners onto the stock barbs.

Rabin

[andrethx]

rabin -- i doubt that my box will be full when i go to get plating this summer, if you have a bunch of fasteners you want to get done, you're welcome to add them to my batch -- i'll pay for the plating, you just pay shipping for your stuff both ways.

as for replacing the fuel lines in your cars -- stainless braided looks amazing and you should consider it for at least one of your cars (the turbo?). but i would enjoy working with you or anybody else who wants to re-plumb a non-xn6 car with polyamide hose so that we can start to identify the superset of fittings & hose sizes needed for all of our cars...

once again i had a couple of free hours today so i did the return line -- you can tell it's the return line because it has an additional connection (a tee) as it passes by the fuel pump/accumulator assembly on its way to the back of the car (see photo below). the return line is a bit longer than the supply line (the one i did yesterday), as the supply line stops at the pump/accumulator while the return goes a bit past that. also, while the supply line has compression nuts on both ends, the return line only has a compression nut on the front; the two rear connections are rubber hose held on by hose clamps. i had already disconnected the tee connection at the pump/accumulator, but i had to cut off the clamp (dremel with a cut-off blade) to get the fuel hose off of the rear end of the return line.

used the same technique as yesterday, came out fairly nicely...see below & after pics:

for those of you keeping track at home, the tubing used on these rigid lines is 5/16". the compression nuts that are held on by flares on the lines are threaded 12x1 (metric), which is an unusual (but not unheard-of) thread pitch; this is why i've had such difficult finding new replacements for the threaded nipples for the flexible lines that these compression nuts screw onto. here's a closeup of the flare:

andré

[tulaweb]

rabin --

...

as for replacing the fuel lines in your cars -- stainless braided looks amazing and you should consider it for at least one of your cars (the turbo?). but i would enjoy working with you or anybody else who wants to re-plumb a non-xn6 car with polyamide hose so that we can start to identify the superset of fittings & hose sizes needed for all of our carsé

I've been sort of eyeballing the stainless braided fuel line for my Diesel but I'm not sure which will be compatible with today's Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel fuel.

[andrethx]

you can get just about any type of fuel line nowadays, and just about every type of line is available with stainless braided covering (or woven fabric covering, for that matter). so long as the core tubing is compatible with diesel, you should be fine.

i chose the polyamide tubing (which is a type of nylon) for my lines because that's what was originally on the car and that's what the porsche and ferrari guys use for their k-jet projects; so i had a roadmap of sorts. the 70s and 80s nylon lines typically had a protective rubber covering on them (like the OE lines on my car), but with the modern stuff, it isn't really necessary.

the problem that you run into is the fact that you have to get fittings that work with your fuel system components (fuel pump, accumulator, injectors, etc.)...for our cars, this basically means metric sizing. that means metric sized tubing for the lines as well, if you go with the original barb-type fittings like i did (since the line has to be sized correctly for the fittings). there aren't a lot of places that carry the metric tubing, so it becomes a bit tricky to find all of the right sizes. i was lucky to find a guy (sort of) locally that carries this stuff, but there were a few different fittings i needed and a few different sizes of tubing, and he has minimum quantities that he has to buy from his suppliers so i had to buy minimum quantities from him, so it gets expensive pretty quickly. the actual value of the stuff i'm putting on my car is fairly inexpensive, but i have lots left over (essentially a lifetime supply for my car).

if you go with the braided stainless-covered line, however, you will not be able to use the barb fittings but instead will be obliged to use crimped fittings or AN fittings. this is actually much more popular, so you will have more options with regard to your lines and the fittings...it's probably cheaper to do it this way if you are working by yourself since you can buy only what you need (higher unit cost but fewer units). but you will still have to get the right sizes of everything which can be daunting if you are a dilettante like me. rabin or nick or joe can probably look at a fitting and guess pretty accurately what size it is, but i can't do that...lots of measuring and looking at catalogs...

for what it's worth, the higher-end european sports and GT cars all use braided line now, so one could argue that it's appropriate for our cars... i've read posts on the ferrari forums that say that the braided stainless-covered lines are better for the l-jet and motronic systems since those systems tend to "pulse" as the injectors are activated (unlike k-jet systems which spray fuel continuously) and the metal braiding helps the line resist deforming over time as a result of the pulsing, but i can't say if this is true or just "truthy."

andré

[andrethx]

i spent some time yesterday underneath my car, cleaning the underside. i've mentioned this before, the underside of my car is extremely nasty...the whole underside is coated with what looks like dirty, oily tar. any time i work under the car i get covered in this greasy substance, so i decided to start cleaning it up. i will be re-installing my rigid fuel lines soon, so it'll be nice to have a clean area to work in.

i initially gathered my materials -- i thought i would use a gentle detergent that is good at breaking up grease:

it soon became apparent that this wasn't going to work very well, instead of a greasy, oily mess i had a greasy, oily wet mess to deal with. so i switched to old rags and a gentle orange cleaner, seemed to work well. here are some before shots:

and here are some after shots...took about 45 minutes:

still a lot more to do! at the rate i was going, i estimate that i will have another 5-6 sessions like this to get everything in good shape. i discovered that the plastic collar on my speedo cable is cracked (see photo immediately above), and my shift lever pops off easily on the transmission side. i also spent a few minutes on the rear differential, it was also completely coated in grime...a few minutes of cleaning revealed a little plaque:

my best guess is that this material was some sort of asphalt-based dealer-applied undercoating. not much need for that in southern california, all it does now is attract dirt & oil.

i also washed the outside of my car, i had a helper :

andré

[Bean]

Dude - two words. Pressure washer!

My recipe for that mess is 1800 psi, and the heavy duty Greasy version of Simple Green. Pressure wash, spray simple green, soak, and repeat. 95% usually comes off after two sessions, then you can go in for hand to hand combat.

Trick is a good pressure washer wand - I made one that I can use different ends on, and one of the ends is a 90 degree sprayer, so it makes it nice for cleaning undercarriage and wheel wells.

And for the record - your undercarriage isn't bad at all.

Rabin

[norcal505]

c'est tré mangifique

[andrethx]

i hear what you're saying about the pressure washer, rabin, and i had considered buying or renting one, but i could not figure out any way to use one under the car without creating a huge, wet mess. another thing i like about doing it by hand is that it gives me lots of time to examine the underside of my car...

anyhow, i spent a bit of time today working on the rear differential. here's a before & after:

while i was working my daughter came out to bring me cold drinks ( ) and my wife came out to ask me when i was putting the seats back in and to tell me that she didn't like the white trunk lid ( ) ...

andré

[bluebenz76]

What a great thread, and what a labor of love. Your car will eventually look like it did the day it left the factory!

[andrethx]

Your car will eventually look like it did the day it left the factory!

the key word here being "eventually." and thanks for the kind words.

it may seem to some that i'm lavishing unnecessary attention on my car, but my car is a particularly bad example of the whole "deferred maintenance" thing that all of our cars suffer from. because my car had a fuel system problem, i had to tackle that at the beginning but it's meant that my car has been disabled for longer that i had initially thought it would be...my goal now is to get it back on the road ASAP, but it takes time to source everything....i'd like to drive my car to whatever west coast meet-up event we have in the coming months...

andré

[andrethx]

a bit more cleaning today...

andré

[Bean]

There's a Spray Nine Grease formula, Castrol has a cleaner, and the Simple Green Grease formula that works great on that caked on stuff. The Castrol stuff is really quite strong, but it works very well indeed.

I still have to say that a pressure washer will make much quicker work of that undercarriage though. In response to the wet mess - it dries. Failing a pressure washer, removing and cleaning in a parts washer would likely be the absolute best way to clean it. I've found on certain parts straight to bead blasting worked great too.

Rabin.

[andrethx]

thanks for the tips, rabin...i really am listening...

still waiting on some fuel system parts to come in so still cleaning. today, i didn't feel like climbing under the car so i turned my attention to the battery tray...this is the only part of my car that has rust -- probably from battery spills long ago. mine looked like this (battery cables tied out of the way for this cleaning):

the first step was to clean it and wire-brush it:

next i applied a rust remover (naval jelly) to the tray and let it sit for 10 minutes:

lastly, i rinsed that off, dried off the tray and hit it with the dremel with a flapper wheel. came out pretty nice:

next step will be to hit it with some primer (tomorrow or the next day)...

andré