Second thoughts

I’ve now got the new fuel filters and tubing that I hope will solve 24ZN’s fuel starvation problem and hope to be fitting them over this week-end if it doesn’t get too hot. It looks as though it might do though, with the temperature climbing again to over 40 degrees Celsius during this coming week.

But before I do I decided to take a closer look at the cracked length of tubing that I removed that I thought was allowing air to enter the system and the image below shows what I found.

The cracking is to the back of what is visible and the image shows clearly from the discolouration that it penetrated to the fabric band that runs length-wise down the centre of the tubing. However, the cut shows that the cracking did not penetrate any further than that, indicating that although compromised, the tubing was still intact and fuel and air-tight in the damaged area.

So this apparently obvious reason for the X-Air’s fuel starvation problem does not appear to be valid, indicating that I’ll have to look elsewhere for the solution. My guess is that it was down to either vapour lock or a semi-blockage of a fuel filter as the engine runs as it should when fuel is delivered at the correct pressure meaning that both the pump and the carbs are doing their jobs.

It’ll be impossible to prove the vapour lock theory but I’m looking forward to checking on the condition of the filters and their contents as soon as I’ve replaced them.