I’ve got the pre-bent fuel lines from WCCC (for my '68 302) and just sized it all up. Took a little bit to visualize it and understand where the lines need to be un-bent or bent to different angles than they’re at, in a few spots, to match the lines on there now. But I think I get it.
What looks like it would be the hardest part is to maneuver the rear line to try and fish it over the emergency brake cable. Seems much more reasonable to just disconnect the emergency brake cable temporarily, at that junction point where the two cables are connected to a sort of bracket. Right?
If I got that right, then I’m wondering if there’s anything important to know there, or just go ahead and disconnect em? Does it matter if the drums are on or off, or is that irrelevant?
My fuel gauge sender works fine as far as I can tell-- can I replace just the tank and lines and reuse the functional sender? Do anything to clean it up?
I won’t ask about the tank because there’s already quite a number of threads that cover that in detail.
Not sure why you would have to but yes. Loosen the tensioner on the driver side and you can disconect the cable. In regards to the fuel sender yes if it is working and clean, Not full of junk just carefully remove it from the tank and re-install in the new tank as long as you are using the same size tank. There is just a little snap ring type thing that holds it on. Use a flat top screw driver, put it on one of the tangs and tap it. It doesn’t have to turn very much to come off, then just lift the sending unit out.
I posted about this in my build thread but expect it will get more responses here…
Replacing the front two fuel lines I didn’t have too much trouble doing. But the rear one, I cannot figure it out.
I know the emergency/parking brake cable had to be disconnected, I expected it before and I found it to be the case yesterday when finally getting to this job. I did it by taking the lever toward the front of the car off by removing the pin that holds it on, which created enough slack in the cable that I could easily disconnect the rear cable from the front cable at the bar that joins them back near the wheels. That was easy enough.
But now I’m finding that it’s seemingly impossible to remove the rear fuel line even still, because I can’t get it past the driver’s side tailpipe. It seems to me that if the tailpipe were not there, it would be relatively easy to get the rear fuel line out and the new one in, but, with the tailpipe in place, it doesn’t seem possible at all to remove the fuel line without cutting or bending it… and since I want to make sure the new line is bent in exactly the same shape as the existing one, I don’t want to mess with the original line or try to bend the new line into shape as I’m installing it.
So! Anyone who’s ever replaced the fuel line on a 1st gen Cougar that wasn’t disassembled at the time, how’d you do it, especially focusing on getting around the tailpipe?
Got the answer from a guy on MCN. Have to remove the rear driver’s side wheel and then can fish the line around and get it out there. Old line out, new one in. Not so bad. The length is off a bit, and the bends required a fair amount of tweaking to get it into place. It’s still not sitting as well as I’d like it to, perfectly like the original did, but it’ll do.