Thread: Fractured fuel return pipe

My daily driver N14 Sunny GTI (1993) has a busted fuel return pipe. This is the hard pipe from the engine bay to the tank where it couples with the rubber hose in to the tank behind the rear left wheel. So...has anyone had to replace one of these before and if so, how did you go about it if you didn't source the part from Nissan? Reason i think it's the return pipe is it just has one of those squeeze the ears with the pliers clips securing the hard pipe in to the rubber hose to the tank (ie low pressure), whereas what i suspect is the feed one has the same screw down band as found each side of the fuel filter (ie high pressure). It's definitely not the breather pipe as the petrol is drip drip dripping at an astonishing rate with the engine running. I'm thinking about cutting the corroded section out and extending the rubber hosed section with a fuel tolerant plastic coupler, and i have all diameters of fuel hose and jubilee clips already in my stock. I know i could make one from copper pipe but somehow i don't see the original piece as having crush bends, but more mandrel bends within...

So, anyone had to do this before?

TIA

I did what your thinking of extending the rubber hose I got no problems

Thanks for the reply, good to know i was thinking on the right tracks.

We had a similar problem, it was rusted and broke apart. We put a hardline we got from a local junkyard, plenty of B13's Tsurus down here in Mexico, you can still get them brand new from the dealership.

Thanks for the reply GSRMx. I would have considered a full replacement if i had somewhere better than a hill outside the house and only 2 jack stands to put the car on

Just to update the thread here's what i did:

- Used a reciprocating air saw to cut the 3 or so inches of rusted section of old pipe. I couldn't really imagine any other way of getting in there without this tool with 6 or so pipes all clamped together and no other way of accurately getting in there to cut.

- A new longer length of 8mm fuel hose. It's about 3ft/1m long but don't sell youself short, get about 4ft.

- I tried to tape the end of the old hose to the new one before i pulled it through from the tank head (under the rear seats) out to the wheel arch, but there is some kind of hose bracket for the feed and return ones about a foot away from the tank head and between the tank and the chassis, completely inaccessible with your hands. This stopped the pulling through of the pipe dead in it's tracks as the hole in the bracket is only just big enough for the hose so the tape gave out and the old and new seperated leaving me desparing a bit! The key here was silicone spray to lube the rubber hose. Give it a good coating and it fed through without too much bother. After that just route the hose through to the hard line, cut to length and hook everything up.

- After doing all this i realised that i might have got away with not cutting the hard line. I suspect the leak was actually at the join where the old hose hooked up to the hard line. The hose was deteriorated and might have been the kind with some metal reinforcing weave through the core of the rubber. I think the corrosion had taken hold of the weave, swelled the rubber and caused it to break up.

- I also fed the new hose as far along the hard line as i could before the pipes were too close together to advance it any further. This effectively covered up the rest of the rusty section of pipe and should ensure as much trouble free service as possible in the future.

Hope this proves of use to someone in the future.