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Fuel line flame explosion prevention


Vertigo

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My car is 32 years old, and I cant imagine the fuel lines have ever been touched. Should I be worried? Fuel is the one thing you do not want ever leaking, especially on an EFI system.

Do people upgrade to braided steel lines? Or will regular lines do the job just as well, or better?

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Performance car? Might be worth the upgrade.

Otherwise decent quality efi rated rubber hose (not the cheap stuff that will degrade faster)

Check condition of hardline and attachment points. 

More or less it's a case of look it over and if it looks bad replace it. Fuel lines typically seem to swell up and collapse on the inside however

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8 hours ago, Firetruck said:

Regular R9 hose and the good quality screw up hose clips will do you fine, but you could go braided AN if you're a bit paranoid

Just make sure its not fake knockoff Chinese shit being sold as real R9 hose. I got caught out a while back buying from a "proper" supplier in the UK, https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2017/09/psa-low-quality-sae-j30-r9-fuel-hose/

8 hours ago, nzed said:

Braided is just looks in a fuel line for normal petrol.  Ot would also offer a little more protection from damage if you're in a rough environment or rubbing etc. But you shouldn't be allowing it to move against something anyway.

Just get decent EFI fuel line. Far cheaper.

Problem with braided hoses is that you cant see what is happening to the rubber hose under the braiding. If its braided, make sure its a proper high quality brand. I wouldn't go there personally; if it needed extra protection i would use a good quality rubber hose with a removable fireproof/abrasion proof sleeve.

This guy had braided hoses, he suspects from where the fire started that it was the pressurised hose before or after the fuel filter that failed. The hoses looked fine a couple of days before.
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On that same note, with any older car it is important to check fuel hoses. Even on a carb it doesnt take long to spray a decent mist of fuel around out of a pin hole in a hose. I have replaced the fuel hoses on my old SD1 due to cracks and leaking fuel (thankfully it was leaking after the fuel pressure regulator so was low pressure), and the current SD1 has had the hoses done. My Mini also had cracking fuel hoses in the engine bay, so those got replaced.

Hard lines are worth checking at bends or where it could rub. If the car is lowered check that the pipes cant scrape the ground going over curbs, angles etc and wear through.

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I just pulled a set of carbs out of storage a few weeks back last night went to pop the hoses off man they were tight on there. Looked in reasonable nick from the outside the inside was dust basically. Fuel pressure would of seen fire for sure.

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