Postby Jolyon39 » 12 Oct 2007 21:36
My car had similar performance problems once so I will relate my own solution to you. I doubt that being violent with the seats did damage though as hard braking etc will slosh the fuel around far more than that. Maybe the pounding shook off more rust?
My car is a 79 DHC imported from the UK. When I smelt fuel I found that the rubber fuel lines were original and had rotted over the 27 years that car had been running. Replace them at both in the engine bay and at the tank sender unit.
The surging , spluttering and loss of power that you describe sounds exactly like the problem I experienced. The level of water, rust and other unidentifiable crud in the fuel tank had reached a point that meant it was sucked up into the fuel lines, filled the float bowls and did the nasty to the needle and seats.
Putting a fuel filter on the line will last a minute before you have to install a new filter so don't even think of it. You can open the tank via the sender unit opening and syphon out quite a bit of the crud but this is a temporary fix, your tank is probably going to leak soon anyway, they all do.
My solution was to remove the tank, the dirtiest job in the whole car, have it reconditioned and reinstall it. During this process it is a fantastic opportunity to clean up rust on top of the rear chasis legs, install new trailing arm bushes, new bushes in the tie rods and even new bushes in the little handbrake pivot lever. This little lever gums up and makes your handbrake less effective so scrub it clean an install the new bushes.
You will need to flush your fuel line and strip the carbs.
There is a huge history of threads here on how to remove your tank Because we all have to fix this at some stage. You will find all the tips and tricks for this on those old threads.
Jolyon
