Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Fuel/brake lines, part 2

Not much to share with this post, other than I have the fuel lines detached!

I had already removed four of the seven mounts, the rearward mounts; these were held on by washers/nuts threaded onto bolts that passed through the floorboard. The three forward mounts, however, were held on by screws, and I chose to be very careful with these, as the screws themselves threaded into hollow areas of the underbody, areas I did not want to have screw remnants bouncing around in later, should I strip the screw heads and have to resort to cutting/drilling them out.

I ended up dousing each screwhead with penetrant at least three or four times over the past few days, and also gave each area a good poking-about with a small flathead screwdriver, just to scrape away the accumulated road goo from the screwheads themselves, and around the edges of the screwheads where they met the mounts. I would also poke said flathead up between the mount and the body and give the mounts a little wiggle on three sides, just to try and loosen things up.

Today I decided to give these screws another shot. Surprisingly, the first one I tried came loose very quickly! Alas, the remaining two gave me some more trouble. A bit more penetrant, a bit more flathead wiggling, and a few light taps on the screws with a hammer, and some two-handed oomph and the last two screws released their death grip.

Now that the fuel lines are out, I just need to get the brake fluid bled out properly so I can tackle the rest of that system, probably starting with the brake line that ran front-to-back parallel with the fuel lines. That brake line is now hanging free and I'd like to get it addressed sooner than later.

No comments:

Post a Comment