Vent tubes predicament - breather pipes

[Carlos A]

-Dear Friends:

One of the gas tank vent tubes (breather) broke near the gas tank so my car has now a leak (the fun never ends!). Inspecting those hoses I noticed that they are hard and need to be replaced. I have been reading past posts about this issue and I do not find a clear and practical solution. I mean, do you know of a way of somehow replacing the gas vent hoses and rerouting them without removing the rear window and the headliner.

I found out that there is (or was) a mod done by Spyder (re-plumbing job on the breather pipes, connecting them to the filler neck ) but I could not find anything on their site.

Also some people mention a modification suggested by Lotus Club Magazine. Apparently, this modification ?brings the two vents from the side of the tank together centrally above the tank. From this point there is a small-bore pipe (4 mm hydraulic / pneumatic plastic pipe) routed through one of the old vent pipes. Also from that central point there is a large bore vent pipe that is taken to the vent inserted in the side of the filler neck.? Does anybody have a copy of this article?

Does anybody have any info on this mater? Any other idea?

I would really appreciate any help.

Best

Carlos

[peterako]

Here's the Club Lotus article Carlos:

+2 Petrol Tank Mod.pdf

(942.32 KiB) Downloaded 1004 times

Best of luck,
Peter

[Carlos A]

Thank you very much Peter. I like the article. I think many will benefit from it.

It is a good solution despite the fact that there is still the need to modify the neck.

Thanks again.

Carlos

[peterako]

My pleasure.

I've yet to get around to doing it and would be interested in hearing how you get on

Peter - so many things to do....so little time....

[Jason1]

This has been talked about before, the link below may be of interest?

elan-plus-f13/fuel-vent-t14212.html

[Carlos A]

Thanks for the link. I read it before posting. Mostly about the Spyder conversion, that they do not do anymore. As far as I know this is the first time someone actually posted the Lotus Club Magazine article about the other solution. Therefore, I am thankful.

I am thinking also about fishing a much smaller hose through the original hoses on both sides so to avoid the modification of the filler neck. I will definitely try something in the month ahead and report to everybody.

Bets

Carlos

[andyhodg]

Hi Carlos

I've done the said mods to my fuel tank. The concern I would have with your suggestion is that during filling, once the petrol is more than half full, the filling rate would be limited by the rate at which the air can exit the tank via the reduced diameter vent pipes. Once I had carried out the mod I noticed that despite having a 1/2" bore vent to the filler neck the filling rate was noticably slower that when I had the original arrangement.

Also when feeding the 4mm flexible pipe through the old tube I had to make a small round ended device that fitted onto the 4mm pipe in order to get it throught the original vents.

The mod the the filler neck is not a big problem. I simply used silver solder to attach a threaded boss to the inside of the filler neck. This allowed me to screw in a suitable hose tail once the filler neck is refitted to the car.


Regards

Andy