Pain in the neck...

Following my fuel leak, I had a bit of a part-buying frenzy. I wanted to ensure that I had all bases covered when I started stripping down the fuel system to see where the problem originate from.

One of the options on my age of van was a leak from the filler neck. My van has a plastic filler pipe which splits part way down to a breather pipe. Both the breather and the main plastic pipes enter the tank through grommeted holes. At the top end, the plastic pipe goes into a rubber neck. This neck butts up to the round hole in the bodywork by the drivers door where is is clamped in place by two large metal 'gasket' rings - these are screwed together, the screw heads visible once the fuel cap is removed.

When I went to remove the screws, they wouldn't budge and the heads rounded - much to my annoyance. I then tried to drill off the heads, but it was a case of Screw Heads 1 : 0 Drill Bits! I broke two drill bits trying.

Once I'd had a good scrape away behind the filler - and removed lots of old mud/crud - I saw that the ring at the back was badly corroded. Due to this, I was able to grab it, twist, bend, swear, curse and eventually break it off. Once off, the front ring and screws can be pulled from the hole.

I'm afraid that I don't have any photos to hand of this.

Once off the van, I could see that the rubber neck piece was very perished - so it was only a matter of time before it holed - I bought a new one from Just Kampers along with a new gasket for the rear. I had my own plated screws that I used.

Before refitting the filler neck and associated gubbins, I decided to take out the expansion tanks and have a good look around behind them as this is a common rust trap. Mine was sound fortunately, so I cleaned up the tanks and then cleared mud etc from the arches. Once all loose sediment had been removed, I gave the area a good coat of waxoil underseal and once dry reinstalled the expansion tanks.

Here's the tidied up area:

I cleaned up the filler hoses and they were ready for the reinstall.