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I think I fixed the leak...


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A few years ago shortly after I bought my boat and became member here I posted a topic about fuel lines and which is which and what I should do about a sheen in the bilge and a noticeable fuel odor. The consensus was to take it in to my dealer and have it checked out. My dealer (now out of business) pressure tested the fuel system and said everything checked ok, told me the sheen was probably from oil or tranny fluid spilled during a change, and the fuel odor was....a figment of my imagination I guess, they said they didn't notice it.

ffwd 2.5 years and I still occasionally notice the fuel odor. I'm modifying my vent line tonight cause I'm an now an awesome surfer who finally went ropeless for about 10 seconds the other day behind my epic wave :clap: ... :unsure: ... and I noticed the fiberglass below the fuel fill was a darker color. Hmmm, that's funny, I just dropped 20 gallons in that same fill earlier today. I grab the hose and I can turn it :crazy: the double hose clamps weren't even tight, I don't know how many rounds it took to tighten them but it was alot. The other side didn't appear to be leaking but was also loose and took a bunch of turns to tighten. Then I look at all the connections on the tank. Every single one of them took several turns in order to snug them up (except for the filter :whistle: )

So back to the leak at the fill on the port side: the more I think and type I doubt it was still wet from when I filled 8 hours prior but rather discolored from from repeated fillups over the course of time...? It wasn't a just a small trickle either, the discolored area is at least an inch wide.

I'm not trying to point a finger at anyone and I'm not 100% sure I even fixed anything but rather would like to know if anyone else has experienced this.? Is "tighten any and all hose clamps" a bullet point in a maintenance section somewhere that I missed? Is this a result of the hoses slowly breaking down? Other thoughts??

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Your boat is way too new to have anything breaking down. the fuel lines should last quite a while. My guess is that they didn't get tightened at the factory. Shift change or end of day can cause that type of thing if you dont write down exactly where you are.

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Whenever you get a new boat, grab your tools and go through the boat and check and tighten every fastener in that you can find. Take nothing for granted. Then periodically check everything, maybe every year or two.

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Somebody else posted that up earlier this year about going through the boat with a screwdriver to see if anything had come loose. I didn't have any backed off hose clamps but did still have a few Items loose that I would not have suspected (blower, for one).

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Well I let the boat sit all day today and that area under the port fill is still discolored. I guess my boat was built and finished on a Friday at 5pm...?

hose clamps generally don't loosen on their own. I know that they can spend years under the hood of a car and not have a problem.....

i know your post has prompted me to do the same...I will be going around checking clamps

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hose clamps generally don't loosen on their own. I know that they can spend years under the hood of a car and not have a problem.....

i know your post has prompted me to do the same...I will be going around checking clamps

Awareness was indirectly another point of this topic. I'm surprised I didn't get a bunch of responses like "I check all hose clamps every 20 hours...", you know how some people are on here :whistle:

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