Vlad's rides thread

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vlad01
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by vlad01 »

I can't open the tank, its already done, not that you can open them anyway without a grinder. I just need to roll the bead from the inside of the fitting pipe, via the outside. It's straight forward. Stick it into the fitting and turn the bead, done! but I need a tool longer so I can roll further down inside the fitting after the hose clamp.

The fitting/tube is about 40mm long total and half way through the wall of the tank, the outside has a bead but the inside end doesn't and the hose can pop off with the return fuel pressure. They did this as they were too lazy in the factory to roll a bead after installing the tube and soldering it in place. The bead would of prevented them pushing the tube through the hole in the tank so they didn't bother and just hoped the hose would stay on lol. My replacement tank happen to have a good hose and was still on the tube. Another tank I had before than got some shit in the return line so I tried to blow it out with the airgun to only pop the hose off inside.

This is only on VP S1 and prior cars, S2 to VS have it connected to the sender but usually have the hose broken off somewhere in the middle because often people aren't careful when replacing the fuel pump and break the hose off in the process. They also have no barb/bead and rely on a clip on type fitting, which works great but the hose itself tends to come of that fitting too, just pushed on with no clamp and doesn't suit clamping anyway. It's like those purge line clips on fittings VS have, not suitable for rubber lines, meant for hard plastic lines that get glued on.


I always replace S2 tanks with S1 where I can tanks for the above reason, they generally out last S2 and suffer less return line breakages, but if I can roll the bead S1 tanks it makes them all that much more reliable.



All good on the offer. I actually went to DYI auto parts today and got most of what I needed. There was a statesman there, I see what you mean. It was totally cleaned out except the rear glass, bare shell! Must be rare in the city. Bendigo they are everywhere and a nuisance, not enough normal cars which is surprising as Bendigo was well known as being commodore central of Australia.
I'm the director of VSH (Vlad's Spec Holden), because HSV were doing it ass about.
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oldn64
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by oldn64 »

Hey Vlad,

(a little personal but...) How fat is your arm... :P can you get to the pipe through the sender hole? The pipe I see broken often is the breather pipe that is on the fill neck. that drives me bananas.

I am a little confused as to why the RETURN pipe would be that critical. If it is in the tank then the fuel is being returned. Clearly it is not great when the fuel level runs lower but even if it does drop into the swirl pot the size of the tank will level it out to nothing anyway. The VL is running a VS tank because someone ( :think: ) hit a ripple strip a little hard and tore the rear muffler clean off and modified the shape of the fuel tank. (big woof in the centre up which made picking up fuel problematic :(

Dont mention the rear glass and statesman in the same sentence. While i found somewhere to live (long story but our family became homeless for 3 months) my statesman lived at a mates place. Some lowlife behind him dicided it would be awesome fun to through rocks at the car and smashed the rear window and one opera glass. (no to mention the damage to the rear garnish and the boot lid.) It took me 3 years to find a car with the glass to remove it. It took me 5 hours because I did not want to break it and the vq glass is different to the vr/vs so had to wait. The day after I got the glass a set of NOS came up on ebay (facepalm) GRRRRRR, then a month later someone started to make the glass brand new for the same price and secondhand. (when I checked the first time it was $800 per opera glass and $300 for the rear one :S

statesmans come in in Melbourne and the just get raided in seconds. I even went to get a speedo cluster of one that looked great only to find some low life have opened the cluster up, bent all the needles and smashed the lcd screens :( some people need and good kick up the bum. It does make sense that country wreckers have the statesmans as most of the population that bought them were more senior and thus are early now. The problem is that the young guys started to realise that the way to get a v8 cheapish was to get a statesman so there is now a new demographic of multiple young people with statesmans.

They arent a bad car, If I could afford one I would actually get a LS3 WM and put a manual in it. Only for the extra room, extra comfort and towing ability. (ie it is cheaper than a SS manual)

Cheers
oldn64
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vlad01
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by vlad01 »

Can only get 3 fingers though the sender hole.

The return line feeds a scavenging venturi setup in the swirl pot that keeps the pot full even with few mm of fuel left. Without it, the car stops dead on cornering with less than 1/3 -1/2 a tank of fuel. Really bad! nearly got cleaned up a few times years ago after loosing all power turning in intersections.

My nephew's car is doing it after RACV changed his pump, it's a S2 tank to they probably broke the line off.
I'm the director of VSH (Vlad's Spec Holden), because HSV were doing it ass about.
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by oldn64 »

Hey Vlad,

I am starting to think that some sort of fuel resistant glue might be the better option and glue the bloody thing on. I seem to recall that with my tank I have been able to get my arm in the sender hole up to almost my elbow, but cannot move to the left or the right so if it is not straight ahead then i am sunk too.

How do you intend to put the hose back on if you cannot gain access? It is almost getting to the stage of cutting the tank open and "making" a drop tank out of two. This will give you the higher capacity and fix the return feed. Maybe the earlier tank were different but i thought the metal pipe went to the swirl tank.

I did have an issue with the vs tank in the vl where dummy here ran E85 and got great results. Until I had issues after the tank got to approx 3/4-1/2 full and then major surge issues. Took me ages to work out what had occurred. Long story short, the rubber hose from the filter to the pickup had perished (sort of) pull the sender out and everything looked fine. Looked in the tank everything clean (hmm nice smell of sugar) put it back, notice a minor leak from the pump, (yes the e85 ate the internal seal of the fuel pump) so replaced this hoping it was the problem. Nope, it still had issues, it was not until I pulled the sender again and touched the rubber hose that it collapsed. Was like molasses and had no structure. It looked fine and the like but was almost liquid and very porous.

I dropped back to E10 after that and two years later had the same issue. I will not run a E blend fuel in the car again.

If you are thinking doing the drop tank then you will need to do a good clean and safety process :thumbup: Fuel eats into the metal so draining it and washing it is not enough.

cheers
oldn64
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vlad01
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by vlad01 »

Interesting you mention ethanol. I had done controlled tests with E85 and all the different rubbers. OEM and aftermarket, hoses, O rings, metals, alloy you name it I left samples soaking in open contained of E85 to give worst case of moisture and oxygen degradation.

The only 2 material I found suffered was the rubber the return line in the tank and small evidence of some specks of oxides on zinalume galvanizing, not that you find that in a car but I was curious to see. The return line puffs up and becomes jelly like and fragile, so it can break off or split super easy. Good news is it's only a permeation of the material and not a chemical reaction, so put it back in petrol or let it expose to air the ethanol will disperse back out and the rubber fully recovers, but takes 2-4 weeks for it all to come out of the rubber. The other bad thing with that line is it has no re-enforcment and is a pure solid rubber construction, so if it's degraded, it breaks.

As for the other rubbers, common off the shelf and even better the genuine OEM GM hoses, and o rings have 0 effect, even 12 months submerged in open jars of the stuff. It's no where near as bad at people preach it to be.

In fact I have had nothing but issues with 95 oct petrol, it's worse than any fuel I have ever come across, corrosive as shit what ever they put in it. I tested different servos individually to try pinpoint the issues thinking it was contamination of the tanks. After a year or 2 I concluded it was the fuel formulation itself. It has some additives that precipitate out of the clean fuel and it turns from a clear yellow to a cloudy orange and coats everything with a fine red residue, corrodes alloy and zinc plating when it does this. I think it does it when exposed to some amount of air? not long either, days to a few weeks at most. E10, 91, 98 are all fine. And if you go to united their 95 is actually E10 so it's fine too. E10 has a slightly higher octane before of the ethanol so they label it by octane and not ethanol content, at least they used to when I used it.


For my next car I am going to design and laser cut a access plate, backing flange and templates to have a plate I bolt on top of the tank to access it. I am going to sort the line and replace it with a gates ethanol grade submersible line since it will be a dedicated E85 car, also drill the venturi hole larger to allow high flow without backing the fuel reg up.

The fuel sender hole is only about 65-70mm diameter, can't even get my hand in. So my choice is probably having a beading tool made that is about 50mm long, then I can use it to do the normal hard lines on the other car too since they have a double bead, one at the end another about 30mm down.
I'm the director of VSH (Vlad's Spec Holden), because HSV were doing it ass about.
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by oldn64 »

Vlad,

Do me a favour.....take a picture through the sender hole. This will give me a better idea (my only tank I have here is in the VL racecar and it is full at present.) I can fit my hand into a cyclone fence so I much be able to this for you with my brake line tooling. but I need to see it first.

My other though was you might be able to make a tool from a small dyna bolt. (the inside part anyway.) This will give you the tapered seat the balls and handle would then be needed to be fabricated.

The hose for the vl was swelled slight the second time yes, but it was sucking air through the hose. I decided to change the internal lift pump at the same time so replaced the hose and drained the e85. Car runs on a diet of 98 and 104 booster now. Goes plenty hard enough, I am not sold on the ethanol side of things. (I too do not believe it is as bad as everyone states) BUT I know the failures I have had which have resulted in a poor day out and lost places in a championship. I know that it was contributed by the ethanol and realistically I have not had a failure in fuel system since not using it. ( The failures I did have where on new pump, the same new pump has going in and still going strong 4 year later) the original new one was used with ethanol for 6 months and leaked and carried on. In fact that pump failed as we unload the car for a double day weekend. Was not too happy. was able to find a pump and fit it but wasted 4 hours of my 2 day race weekend.

You are not that far from me and I often drive through Kyenton. So I am sure if I can get my hand in there and it is relatively straight we might be able to do it in the tank.....

Cheers
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vlad01
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by vlad01 »

Ah nope! filler neck vs the sender hole size, not that different and I know the filler neck is 52mm as I got the hose for it the other week. So the sender hole is about 60-70mm

I will probably just get a sample of the area from a tank at pick a part (lost my sample return fitting) and get my preferred engineering shop to make me a tool, they have made me a heap of custom one off tools for stuff all. Even made me installation tools for some bushes I asked them to custom make and chucked in the tool for nothing with out even asking :thumbup:

IMG_0517.JPG
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by oldn64 »

vlad01 wrote:Ah nope! filler neck vs the sender hole size, not that different and I know the filler neck is 52mm as I got the hose for it the other week. So the sender hole is about 60-70mm

I will probably just get a sample of the area from a tank at pick a part (lost my sample return fitting) and get my preferred engineering shop to make me a tool, they have made me a heap of custom one off tools for stuff all. Even made me installation tools for some bushes I asked them to custom make and chucked in the tool for nothing with out even asking :thumbup:

Yep no chance.....How the hell they put the hose on anyway, 2 year old???

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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by vlad01 »

They construct the insides and then seam weld the 2 halves together. Bad idea if you want to fix anything in them.
I'm the director of VSH (Vlad's Spec Holden), because HSV were doing it ass about.
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Re: Vlad's rides thread

Post by oldn64 »

vlad01 wrote:Bad idea if you want to fix anything in them.
Yes that is more what I was getting at. It is like the Morris or Rootes group cars. They are great BUT had two engineering teams, the first to make the vehicle work. The second to make it near impossible to work on. I would seriously consider making the tank larger, hopely a little bit more planned than what we did to a mates Fairlane 500 back in the day....that I would not recommend to anyone. (You dont want to know.)

Cheers
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