loose fuel hose

[brad360]

I have a fuel line hose that has come loose. In the engine bay, passenger side, coming out from the fire wall down low there are two hoses. The hose leading to the big fuel filter has come loose (sudden loss of power, fuel on road, luckily only 1 min from home).

When I try to wiggle it back on, the little pipe that it fits on to starts disappearing behind the firewall or whatever the thingy is called. I removed the steel clip and put some hot water on it to try and soften it up a bit, but I can't get it to wiggle on, not more than about 5mm anyway.

Next guess is a helper under the car, reaching up and holding the little pipe with pliers to stop it disappearing, while I wiggle the hose on. Two arms can't reach down at the same time. Maybe some vice-grips could be an idea?

Can the pipe be accessed/held from behind the metal wall anywhere?

Tell me.... What is the second fuel line for, it leads to a smaller filter and then to the injectors.

What happened to the photos of cars at the top of the web page?

[brad360]

The other "filter" I mentioned on the other line is in fact a pressure regulator, according to the Haynes manual.

I'm not the first to have the above problem, this is from the tale of 650,000km in a 360GLT, I posted it some years ago:

"300700km. petrol line broken at a swage joint between line from tank to filter where the line comes through the chassis member near the firewall. Car stopped dead in its tracks with petrol spraying all over the road and engine. The silver 360 the same trick too; seems to be another Volvo safety feature. Lucky the cars did not go up in flames. When the cars were assembled the swage crimp was only partly crimped and it is a wonder why the joint lasted so long. The break would have to be in the most inaccessible place as it was only accessible with extra long nosed pliers to hold the plastic pipe (it had shrunk about 30mm over 10 years) from the petrol from tank from vanishing down the hole in the chassis when a longer rubber pipe was pressed on. Nearly impossible to do up the hose clamp with a screw driver as the joint is virtually inaccessible from any angle. ( In the meantime I purchased two more 360’s and the petrol lines also failed at the same place) Pinging getting worse."

[brad360]

I held the little pipe with vice-grips, put a hose clamp over the hose, then wiggled the hose on, maybe 15mm was as far as I could get it to go before running up against the vice-grips.

I tightened the hose clamp with a short stubby screwdriver, using my left hand, with my right hand I poked down the longest screwdriver I had, to stop the hose clamp twisting around the hose as I applied pressure with my left hand.

Car goes again!!

This certainly is in a difficult to access position.

[pettaw]

Nice one, well done on getting that done.

Sorry I didn't get to this earlier, but the red and black pipes are bound together, so if you can't get at one to tighten it up properly, then you should be able to pull both of them through just a little bit. BTW, make sure there's that brass insert thingy in the end of the pipe, otherwise you won't be able to get enough clamping force to seal it properly. (Volvo one-piece clips for the lose btw, they are useless)

[brad360]

What is the little brass thingy at the end of the pipe?

The pipe I saw was just a plain cylinder, about same diameter as a drinking straw, the wall thickness maybe 3 mm. I thought a better design would be to have a bulge at the end to stop the hose sliding up, like garden hose fittings. I just did the hose-clamp up as tight as I could. I used a stainless steel hose-clamp, Australian made, $3.50 for a pack of two, 10 chinese non-stainless were the same price. About 1 pound 70p.

[Chris_C]

There is a bit of thinwall brass inside the drinking straw, so that as you tighten up the fuel clamp, the rubber hose has something to squish against rather than buckle the drinking straw bit!

If you havn't got one, shouldn't be hard to make.

[brad360]

For the record, my car had done 164,000km when this happened.