E30 Zone

Driving along merrily suddenly there is a very heavy smell of fuel and that quarter of a tank I had, is drained onto tarmac in at least 10 seconds. I just watched the fuel gauge light come on very smugly. Rolled it to the side of the road and seen the remains of my £20 worth of fuel snaking up to the car. Was not pleased. Looks like fuel tank has ruptured somehow I'll have to take a good look tomorrow. E30's eh? Gotta love em'!

Shocking!

To get the fuel glugging out at that rate, you must have snapped off the stub pipe! IT' be a hell of a hole to let 15 litres out at that sort of speed.

on the good side i have a spare tank

Good news is that if it came out at that speed, there's a chance that there's still fuel in one half.
No orifices into the tank that are low enough down to drain a quarter tank, except the drain plug, and I've never seen rust in the lower half.
Unless this is one of those ridiculous 'stanced' cars, dragging its arse along the road, and has simply ripped the bottom of the tank open, I'd say the problem is a split high pressure fuel hose or similar, and the fuel has been pumped out.

Grrrmachine wrote:Shocking!

To get the fuel glugging out at that rate, you must have snapped off the stub pipe! IT' be a hell of a hole to let 15 litres out at that sort of speed.

I know, it's still down there. I'll have to collect it tonight, I thought it might be the stub pipe. But how it gushed out in that amount of time, it must've been rusty as heck because isnt the stub pipe welded? then just got to a point and broke, it happened about 20 minutes after I filled it.

andyp wrote:on the good side i have a spare tank

I'll let you know, I need to inspect what on earth has gone on.

Brianmoooore wrote:Good news is that if it came out at that speed, there's a chance that there's still fuel in one half.
No orifices into the tank that are low enough down to drain a quarter tank, except the drain plug, and I've never seen rust in the lower half.
Unless this is one of those ridiculous 'stanced' cars, dragging its arse along the road, and has simply ripped the bottom of the tank open, I'd say the problem is a split high pressure fuel hose or similar, and the fuel has been pumped out.

You could be very right Brian, but quarter of a tank was in it that is about 15 -20 letres high and if the tank can hold about 80 letres it must've been quite low. And no my car is high and mighty also bog standard. I'll check hoses, do you mean the hose that goes from the tank to the external fuel filter? It's only about 20mm in diameter and to exhaust 20 letres in around 10 seconds is some feat.

Fuel tanks are 55 and 63 litres capacity, so quarter of a tank is 15 litres max.

To start, get on your knees by the rear drivers wheel and look at the stub pipe, the rubber hose that comes off it and the metal filler section. If that all seems good, get to the other side and find the hoses for the fuel filter, where they meet the hard lines. If everything's there, follow the lines under the passenger sill to the bulkhead where they become rubber hoses again.

As Brian states, if it's not a gaping hole caused by a rock, or a broken stub pipe, it'll be those hoses somewhere. If it was a break closer to the engine (say, injector rail) I'd expect your engine to catch fire from that much fuel poured over it when hot.

Grrrmachine wrote:Fuel tanks are 55 and 63 litres capacity, so quarter of a tank is 15 litres max.

To start, get on your knees by the rear drivers wheel and look at the stub pipe, the rubber hose that comes off it and the metal filler section. If that all seems good, get to the other side and find the hoses for the fuel filter, where they meet the hard lines. If everything's there, follow the lines under the passenger sill to the bulkhead where they become rubber hoses again.

As Brian states, if it's not a gaping hole caused by a rock, or a broken stub pipe, it'll be those hoses somewhere. If it was a break closer to the engine (say, injector rail) I'd expect your engine to catch fire from that much fuel poured over it when hot.

It was deffently the back it came from, possibly passenger side. So it looks like the lines. The car is currently nor was on fire so I don't think it was upfront. I'll know the answer in an hour.

No smoking either!

Morat wrote:No smoking either!

Aha I put a notice on the car saying 'no smoking fuel leak!' Got it home, fuel filter has been split and opened up and the pipe from the tank to the filter has been ripped off then a dent on the tank, so I think a rock or something has kicked up on the tyre or something but I might be in luck the tank doesn't appear to be leaking when I dropped some fuel into it after luckily having spare pipe and filter knocking around in the garage. whether a dented tank will be a problem I don't know. Still puzzled though how so much fuel escaped.

if its a dull rounded dent you should be fine, however if its a sharp crease its more likely to have split the metal inside.