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Anyone have any experience doing this? While scraping old crud off the steel fuel lines on the restoration car, I created a gas leak. Grr. I guess better to expose this hidden rust problem now rather than find it later on the road. This is a carb car with lower fuel pressure, so they might have already been leaking in an FI system.

Fortunately, the BMW feed and return lines exist and are on their way from Germany. They'll be lightly coiled, so the challenge will be in all the tube bending. I'm also buying a few different tool bending options. I've got one of those cross-bow style ratchet benders on the way and I'm also poking around on some smaller hand tools as well.

Big question is on the general strategy: Do I try to copy the old lines off the car or be under the car matching each bend to the contours of the underside? I also have yet to discover what secures these lines at the front of the car when they come up through the frame rail into the engine bay. I've done brake line bending, but those are all much shorter segments and on-the-workbench procedures.

In the front ,the lines are just clamped to the side of the framerail right below where they go through the inner fender. I think you will find biggest challenge where they pass the rear subframe / diff. My 528 is all in pieces , but don`t know how I would fix that without dropping the frame...

No issue with access for me. The entire back end is all cleared out for restoration. Working on rust spots on the underside with everything removed is how this can of worms got opened...

dutch wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 3:08 am In the front ,the lines are just clamped to the side of the framerail right below where they go through the inner fender. I think you will find biggest challenge where they pass the rear subframe / diff. My 528 is all in pieces , but don`t know how I would fix that without dropping the frame...

ah, the good old reliable can of wurms...

Upon receiving the new fuel lines, the job looks a little bit easier than expected. I was expecting straight line just wound in a coil. Instead, it looks like BMW produces the exact line with all the bends in it. Either through storage or the shipping process, it gets gently wound up as shown. Therefore, the process really becomes identify which end is which, use the bending tools to carefully straigten the straight runs, and and use the bending tools to adjust all the bend locations, as needed.


New BMW hard fuel lines. A pair of return lines and a pair of feed lines.




Beading on new fuel lines. On further inspection, the beading is actually right on the end inside the yellow caps. Might attention was initially focused on what I now understand is a stop for the hose end (shown) that is a feature not present on the originals.




Variety of bending tools. It's basically guaranteed that no one tool will do all the bends.