exciv2000
08-02-2002, 11:04 PM
Yeah, that's what I was saying today. My fiancee and I went to her school to get her registerd for the fall, then took a trip down I-25 south, headed towards Colorado Blvd. I pass this old beater, and all the sudden it starts to smell like raw gasoline. I think nothing of it, thinking it's the beater. After I'm 200 yrds in front of him, the gas smell is still there. I look down at the fuel gauge, did I boost that much recently? maybe, but where the hell is that smell coming from? By this time I'm about a 1/2 mile away from Broadway doing 15 mph in rush hour, a cop basically right beside me in the right hand lane, and he's not even worried about me. I look in the rearview, then back to the ground in front of me, then back into the rearview and HOLY SMOKES, it's ME leaving a trail of gasoline out the back of the car. Did I hit something and put a hole in the tank? Gas gauge keeps getting lower and lower now, and I know if I don't get off soon and kill the car, I'm going to be sitting on I-25 with my hazards on. Traffic moves a bit, and I move behind the cop, about to get the hell off the highway. A guy in a TL pulls up next to me, I roll the window down, and he tells me I'm leaking gas, I'm like "nah, really, got a gas can genious?" Instead I asked him where it was coming from, front or back, and he tells me front. At this time I'm thinking "not good." Now I'm on the exit ramp going to broadway, the car dies. Oh shit, will I ever get it started again? I coast to the light, it turns green, I start the car and it grudgingly grumbles back to life. I step on the gas and its going nowhere fast. I pull off on a side street and into a parking lot behind a... am I seeing correctly... an auto garage. Looks pretty run down, but there are people inside working on cars, and this is a good thing because I didn't have my trusty craftsman toolkit with me (it's a honda for christ's sakes, and I have AAA). I coast the car into an empty parking spot, pull the keys and pop the hood. There is gas everywhere on the driver's side of the car, and the raw stench is quite overpowering. I know just where to look, and... damn I'm good... my suspicions are right, the fawking fuel return line popped off the stock FPR, with the hose clamp still attached to the rubber hose. Heh, my rubber came off.
The hose clamp was on pretty tightly, but wasn't far enough onto the barb to be effective for very long, and today it said 'enough.' I walk over and borrow a flat head screw driver, a hammer, and a utilty knife from the guys in the auto shop. I take the hose clamp off, cut the fuel hose a bit, and hammer the fuel exit of the stock FPR down a bit so I can get some more rubber on it. Clamp that down again, pull on it a bit to make sure it's not going anywhere, and the woman and I return the tools and walk 3 blocks down to an expensive ass 91 octane Texaco. It cost me $11.something for two 1 gallon gas cans and 2 gallons of gas. The pump stopped at 1.874 gallons, so I wasn't happy about that, probably the most unhappy about this whole situation. screw it. We walk back to the car, fill the tank with 1.755 gallons (est.) because of the fuel leaking down the side of the car from the lack of rubber washers in these stupid Blitz plasic cans. I have her turn the key while I check under the hood for any more leaks, turn it off, turn it on, turn it off, turn it back on once more, and everything looks good. I hop in and we're off to the gas station to get my tank filled completely. On our way there we see this accident that just happened (somebody was probably watching my fiancee's ass and thick blond hair waiver down the sidewalk with me when we were walking back to the car), go figure... she got whistled at too earlier on the way back. Well the accident blocked off my chances of getting back onto Broadway north and then getting back onto I-25 south, so we head to Evans, then to Colorado Blvd. like our original plan.
My luck was pretty good and my mood was therefore even better about the whole situation. I suppose it could have been worse. I figured out that I had roughly 4, maybe 5 gallons of gas in the tank when the fuel return line came off. I did some quick caculations and determined that I lost roughly 4 gallons of gas within 2-3 minutes... now THATS a fuel pump, 255LPH, or about 65 gallons an hour.
Our whole reason for going to Colorado Blvd. was so we could visit VoiceStream. We got a new family plan with two free Nokia cell phones with AOLIM on them, and I even got a Jamba Juice out of it :)
The hose clamp was on pretty tightly, but wasn't far enough onto the barb to be effective for very long, and today it said 'enough.' I walk over and borrow a flat head screw driver, a hammer, and a utilty knife from the guys in the auto shop. I take the hose clamp off, cut the fuel hose a bit, and hammer the fuel exit of the stock FPR down a bit so I can get some more rubber on it. Clamp that down again, pull on it a bit to make sure it's not going anywhere, and the woman and I return the tools and walk 3 blocks down to an expensive ass 91 octane Texaco. It cost me $11.something for two 1 gallon gas cans and 2 gallons of gas. The pump stopped at 1.874 gallons, so I wasn't happy about that, probably the most unhappy about this whole situation. screw it. We walk back to the car, fill the tank with 1.755 gallons (est.) because of the fuel leaking down the side of the car from the lack of rubber washers in these stupid Blitz plasic cans. I have her turn the key while I check under the hood for any more leaks, turn it off, turn it on, turn it off, turn it back on once more, and everything looks good. I hop in and we're off to the gas station to get my tank filled completely. On our way there we see this accident that just happened (somebody was probably watching my fiancee's ass and thick blond hair waiver down the sidewalk with me when we were walking back to the car), go figure... she got whistled at too earlier on the way back. Well the accident blocked off my chances of getting back onto Broadway north and then getting back onto I-25 south, so we head to Evans, then to Colorado Blvd. like our original plan.
My luck was pretty good and my mood was therefore even better about the whole situation. I suppose it could have been worse. I figured out that I had roughly 4, maybe 5 gallons of gas in the tank when the fuel return line came off. I did some quick caculations and determined that I lost roughly 4 gallons of gas within 2-3 minutes... now THATS a fuel pump, 255LPH, or about 65 gallons an hour.
Our whole reason for going to Colorado Blvd. was so we could visit VoiceStream. We got a new family plan with two free Nokia cell phones with AOLIM on them, and I even got a Jamba Juice out of it :)