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Replacing fuel line between primary and secondary rail
In the process of replacing a leaking coolant themo switch for the radiator fans, I somehow managed to put a pinhole in the fuel line connecting the secondary and primary fuel rails. Anyone ever replace this line without disassembling the entire top of the engine? What am I in for? Luckily I have an air pump delete and single turbo, so there is a little space to get to the secondary rail connection. The primary connection looks buried in the depths of the rats nest. Of course the car is an hour away from my shop. Thanks for any advice,
I had to swap my injectors and if you already have the UIM off, just unbolt the rats nest and it's no big deal to remove the primary fuel rail. Just don't lose the plastic spacer between the rail and the iron.
Thanks Vince- I'm a pro at pulling the UIM and have the banjo bolt on the secondary rail off. I just have to be emotionally ready to unbolt the rats nest. Thanks for the hint about the spacer, but I hope to not to have to remove it to reach the screws holding the fuel line on. I hope.
It's in the way. Access to where the secondary/primary fuel line connects to the primary rail is quite tight. I'd like to remove the fewest number of parts to get to it. I've never delved the deep into the murky depths and time is of the essence to get this thing back into storage and my winter car into its current residing place.
The rats nest appears to have stuff attached to it (it should be obvious that *I* didn't do the single turbo conversion). Given the situation, is there a best/better way to proceed to get access to the screws holding the fuel line to the primary rail? Thanks.
Update: After trying to find a non-invasive approach to getting to the primary rail, it looks like everything has to come off. Not what I can deal with right now, so on a trailer it goes.
Last edited by NV02; 10-13-19 at 03:41 PM.
Reason: Throw in the towel
Delete that in its entirety. All of that gets deleted. NONE of it needs to be there for any reason. Not a single part of it. None.... all of it can go away. Delete it all. The whole assembly. Remove it
I'm towing it back to the shop to replace the fuel line. As it's clear I need to pull everything out to get to the primary fuel rail, it will definitely be time to clean up the mess under the UIM. The less I have to put back, the better. I guess the guy who did the single turbo conversion figured "out of sight, out of mind". Ridiculous.
As another benefit, I managed to snap the vent connector off the plastic oil filler neck during this excursion. Here comes the IRP stainless steel filler neck! Thank heavens IRP has them in stock to kill a couple birds with one stone.
ALL of it. everything under the intake manifold with the exception of the fuel parts and coil packs. straight up ALL of it. the only vacuum lines you should have under there are the for oil injectors. the only components under there will be the AIT, injectors and rails, coil packs. thats it. delete everything that isnt those things
I've got the fuel pressure regulator vacuum line and looking for the oil injector vacuum line. There were still a couple of vacuum lines connected to the rats nest, but they got lost in the destruction. I may come back with a question or two, but it already looks much better.
All for this:
Any thoughts on what else I should do while I've got the top of the engine exposed?
if it wasn't easy then you weren't being aggressive enough lol
while you're in there, delete the fuel hard lines and run a line straight from the firewall to the rails. this eliminated 4 clamps and 4 potential and HIGHLY unlikely failure points.
send your injectors off to be cleaned at injectorsRX
delete the throttle body coolant lines
replace your vacuum lines with silicone
replace the o-ring at the bottom of your oil filler neck
thats about all i can think of for that area in terms of maintenance and deletes. if you dont have a fast reacting IAT, now would be a good time to swap that out since the manifold is off. deleting the double throttle system would be nice too.
Just wanted to drop by and mention that along with the vacume line to the fuel pressure regulator, the purge control solenoid for the vapor line on the fuel tank to the uim. I can see it in your picture ( far right) but not sure if it was still hooked up. This should help.... I circled it in red. I also included the thread for vacuum line routing variations. Good luck!
if it wasn't easy then you weren't being aggressive enough lol
while you're in there, delete the fuel hard lines and run a line straight from the firewall to the rails. this eliminated 4 clamps and 4 potential and HIGHLY unlikely failure points.
send your injectors off to be cleaned at injectorsRX
These are great ideas. I may put everything back together to make sure I didn't screw something up before embarking on these topics.
Originally Posted by cr-rex
delete the throttle body coolant lines
Hadn't thought of this. I will investigate further.
Originally Posted by cr-rex
replace your vacuum lines with silicone
replace the o-ring at the bottom of your oil filler neck
Check and check.
Originally Posted by cr-rex
thats about all i can think of for that area in terms of maintenance and deletes. if you dont have a fast reacting IAT, now would be a good time to swap that out since the manifold is off. deleting the double throttle system would be nice too.
Already have those taken care of. Thanks so much for these suggestions.
Originally Posted by gdub29e
Hey Dave,
Just wanted to drop by and mention that along with the vacume line to the fuel pressure regulator, the purge control solenoid for the vapor line on the fuel tank to the uim. I can see it in your picture ( far right) but not sure if it was still hooked up. This should help.... I circled it in red. I also included the thread for vacuum line routing variations. Good luck!
Wow, mind blown that you spotted that. The purge control was indeed plumbed. I'm looking forward to removing all those lines. Thanks for posting the diagrams and link!
As a follow up, I wanted to share what I ended up with. Fist, if I had started with this, it would have made my life much easier. Here is the replacement fuel line installed between the primary and secondary rails:
And everything I removed:
I now have a very clear understanding of the vacuum plumbing on the car. A little overwhelming at first, but a little help my my friends (that's you guys) made it an exercise in patience and research. I buttoned it up to perform a leak test: success!
There are still a few pieces I'm waiting on (oil filler neck), those will go on when they arrive. Until then it seems like I haven't screwed anything up. Amazing.
10-12-19, 05:23 PM
