Seems like everything on automobiles is getting more complicated.  Take even basic things like fuel lines…in the past a fuel line was just a simple piece of steel tubing that went from one end of the car to the other, had basic fittings on the end and that’s all there was to it.  Well, it still may be made of steel, but the problem now is that they have complex fittings on the ends of them to couple to fuel filters, and fuel rails for the fuel injection, and things like that.

What that essentially means is that if you have a rusted steel fuel line, you may have to replace the entire thing, and that may come as a big complex assembly that runs from one end of the vehicle to the other. In some cases the replacement even requires jacking the body off of the frame of the car and can be horrific as far as expense is concerned.

Well, Dorman Products has a repair kit for steel fuel lines, and it comes with all of these special connectors, and it has tools and fittings to connect those to replacement steel lines.  So it can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars.  Now this isn’t do-it-yourself but if you need fuel line repair, look for a shop that has one of these Dorman kits.

Another thing that has been going on is that on many cars, the fuel line has moved from steel to plastic.  You may say plastic isn’t going to rust out, and that’s absolutely true because it does not, but it can be damaged by debris from the highway, it can be damaged from running over bumpers in the parking lot, all sorts of different things, even jacking the car up improperly.  So what do you do?  Again, it’s back to Dorman products. They have a kit that includes repair pieces: pieces of the plastic tubing, the tools to install these pieces, and all of the specialty ends to couple the fuel line to the fuel filter and the fuel rail.  Now this stuff is impossible to find in most cases but it’s all included in these Dorman kits, so that’s something that you want to look for if you need a fuel line repair on your car. 



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The address is MotorWeek, Owings Mills, MD, 21117.