Fuel cell issue

[mopho]

So as discussed a bit in an unrelated thread my car had been having fuel starvation issues that I had assumed was the foam deteriorating from ethanol laden pump gas in my fuel cell

Magnus and I finally had the chance to tackle the issue today and it turns out it wasn't the foam after all. Pulled the filter out and there were a few particles of foam stuck in it, but nothing to cause the fuel starvation. So at this point we took out some of the foam in the tank and discovered that the fuel pick up hose that runs across the bottom of the tank had broken off (which explains why I was getting more starvation issues when making right turns).


It was also a good thing this happened because we discovered that many of the rivets holding my floor up had broken and I was in real danger of falling through the car :eek:


And no, I don't weigh that much. There was some mods made earlier in the cars life for a support bracket that holds the high capacity fuel pump up under the driveshaft and some of the rivets had been removed for that bracket, which seems to have led to the others breaking little by little over time. I don't know how I had not noticed this before, especially since I had the seats out a few months ago to install new belts :banghead:



.

[Doug Liedblad]

I too have had rivets holding the floor to the chassis break. I inspect them from time to time.

[magnusfeuer]

The reason for the failed rivets holding the floor to the frame seems to be that a about 6 of them were replaced with blind nuts that were not expanded into the frame correctly, thus were loose. The nuts were put in place so that a plate holding the fuel pump could be bolted in place.

I've replaced the failed rivets with sturdier ones, and will see if I can get the blind nuts to expand as well.

/Magnus F.

[Elv15]

Note: lowered floors come with steel rivets - much harder to install, but I suspect they offer a longer service life. Time will tell...

Tom

[Roll a 7]

If you are using E85 that could cause some degradation of the fuel ines.

[mopho]

That's exactly what happened, it seems the fuel lines are going bad. We installed a 10 micron filter right in front of the rail to buy some time, but now it seems the throttle position sensor went too.