The Good, the Bad and the bloody Ugly Lovely winter weekend weather, clear blue skies and sun. A bit cold early morning but very tolerable. A great "H3NRI" driving weekend. Saturday me and the wife pottered around town, cafes and car yards. Later i went for a quick drive out to less urban roads to rediscover what happens when you actually push the pedal all the way down! Good
Sunday, visit to brother in law about an hour away, for breakfast. So up early, multiple layers of clothes, helmets and gloves etc and set off around 8 am(4oC). So far so good. 10 mins later on the motorway at 100kph the wife draws my attention to a small jack frost like apparition at the top of her perspex screen. It is alive! we watch it slowly grow and branch and more stat from below. 5 mins later screen is in several separate parts!! OK, that not so good, but press on regardless. Then notice the screen is actualy wet? Perspex melting ?? no but there is a smell of petrol!! You guessed it, petrol leaking from somewhere near injector passenger side. Discretion being best part of valour, pulled off motorway, stopped to inspect. Obviouly leaking but only when motor on (pressurised). So what to do, no hose clips in tool kit. Decided to try to drive back home, hopefully avoiding being Kispy Krittered along the way!!! Well it all got worse very quickly so pulled into supermarket car park next to garage.
Tried the supermarket and the garage, no hose clips, bugger. Ring the AA, say i have broken down with a slight fuel leak, can serviceman come and repair with hoseclip?. Well, could hear the panic set in on the other end. Apparently i need to call the fire brigade to make car safe before they would do anything! seemed a bit extreme, so i asked if fireman will bring a hose clip to make it safe, no they wouldnt???? I thanked them for the lack of roadside service in the most polite way and hung up.
By now had some early bird shopping admirers and very helpful they were too. One had ceelon tape which was applied over end of hose and injector. Another had cable ties so applied one as tight as possible upstream of the existing "crimp style" clip. Voila, no leak, so in and off quick onto motorway and home. Not even a smidgen of vapour on the newly sculptured screen ! Hoorah for curious admirers and ceelon tape.
Now for the essence of this long winded story. This is the second time I have had this same fuel leak issue. (As have others on this forun). The culprit being the inadequate "crimp" style clips used to seal the petrol cross pipe between the injectors.
I had replaced the crimps for decent fuel hose clips suitable for injector pressure hoses, but this was a couple of years back when all was new. Since then the motor has been rebuilt due to broken cam and bent crankshaft splines!. Got the car back 4 months ago, all rebuilt with new compensator, bevel box and front adjustable shocks. Of course the hose now had lovely new black crimped clips. Looked real nice especially in black BUT leaks in just 4 months.
Now resplendent with ugly stainless, screw tightening, injector hose suitable clips, all should be well now.
S0 if you havent done so yet, replace or add a second set of clips for safety's sake !!! Photos
