On some of our recent hottest days I've been having hot starting issues. I suspect all that fuel getting warmed up under the hood has been the primary issue so I went for a little cleanup project. Some before pics here showing all the plumbing under the hood as well as the canister filter.
I got some tee fittings for the carbs with the idea that I could run a short little tube between each of the carbs and just run a single feed line from the pump instead of having that big fuel-heating aluminum log. It ALMOST worked! Unfortunately the carb linkage hit the doggone tee fittings. At first I thought I was gonne be done early but since it was still morning I decided to go all out do whatever it took to get it done. You guessed it, making parts again so I can get my "3-4 hour" project done in only 10-1/2 hours, lol.
Took me a good couple hours to figure out my solution and draw up the part, then knock out the fittings on the manual lathe. Was a good side job I think, they came out nice and put my supply line exactly where I needed it, just outboard of the air cleaner base.
The carb supply line coming up from the filter is now a -6 instead of a -8, partly because of the way the fittings worked out, but also to reduce the volume of fuel under the hood. I have it routed as directly as possible which sure cleaned things up, but unfortunately now it runs right next to the water pump. I thought about routing it up over the AC pump like before but I really thought that looked like a mess. Hopefully being a smaller line the fuel won't pick up too much heat on the way to the carb.
Still looks a bit tacky since I only had those clamps hanging around that are about 2 sizes too big, but I have another plan to clean that up too. What I'll do is get rid of the shorty braided hoses and use o-ringed sleeves between the carbs. The tee fittings will have a short hard line with a nut, then the o-ringed sleeves will seal onto the outsides of those hard lines. Could have done that today but I didn't have any o-rings hanging around that would work.
When I relocated the filter from the back to the font, I couldn't figure out a better location for it than under the hood, more or less behind the driver side headlight. Also it was side mounted which meant having to unbolt the filter head to change the filter without making a mess.
After some more thought and test fitting, as well as some scrap bin digging, the filter now sits right behind the front bumper mounted on a 1/8" thick aluminum plate, shielded from any debris the tire may be able to kick up. Also you can see the regulator on the forward side of the bumper mounting bracket so it's well shielded too. The hoses are all well up out of the way and the filter is in a nice cool location, I'm digging that.
Haven't driven it during the heat of the day yet, but after getting home from the shop I felt the filter and it was cool like the bumper, not hot like the inner fender as it was before. I just have one spot to address where the hoses pass between the frame and sheet metal. It's not touching anything at rest but I'm sure it will flex around while driving and maybe eventually chafe through a hose or something. I have some of that anti-chafing wrap around here someplace, just need to find it and put on a couple wraps and should be fine.
Next project will be wire management. Going to get those ugly damn wires off the top of my intake manifold. I'm thinking I'll run them under the motor mount and up the front between the PS pump and AC pump like the fuel line now does.
