Failed Aftermarket Fuel Fitting Warning

I recently began the process of taking the car out of Winter storage.

As I pulled the plugs to crank the engine over, I noticed that one of my aftermarket Goodridge fuel fittings had cracked. This wasn't the fitting per se, but the socket that threads the hose onto the fitting. It was a place I never thought a failure could occur.

It was a clean through-wall crack the length of the socket. The only seal against my ~60 psi of fuel would have been the Teflon/Kevlar braided hose threaded onto the fitting. Obviously not good.

I googled and didn't come up with any other failures of this type. I was very careful when assembling these (only used aluminum clamps), and didn't nick these on the ends where they would have stress risers. The only thing I can think of is a bad batch of aluminum made it through QC and were made into the sockets. Goodridge is a relatively good name, and I used the expensive 910 Teflon-lined, Kevlar-braided fuel hose. One forged 6AN fitting is $25. I emailed Goodridge about three business days ago and have had no response.

I checked over all of my other 6AN fittings (fuel), 4AN fittings (brakes), and 12AN fittings (oil), and didn't observe any other defects. There is only one location I could not get access to (the fuel sending line out of the top of the tank). I'll need to borrow a boroscope from work to inspect that.

Just FYI - Always check the condition of your fuel, oil, and brake systems. Obviously, this is due to aftermarket problems and self-inflicted in my case, but those with OEM fuel hoses are getting old and cracked too.

Dave

View attachment 132993

Another one just cracked.

The good news is that Goodridge has made contact with me and are reviewing the pictures. I hope they'll make this right by replacing everything. I will also need new hose (at $22/foot) since I did not make my lines with an extra 2" of slack.

Until I can make up new lines, I bought a bunch of 7/8" hose clamps and have clamped all of them now to be safe. It looks stupid and adds weight, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

I was so thorough when making these things. I even bought a cap and Schrader valve fitting so I could pressurize them to ~150psi with my air compressor to check for leaks before installing. I figured 2x normal operating pressure was a good enough test. These are supposedly good for a few hundred psi anyways.

That's wild that they would design the collars with such little margin. Or use junk quality aluminum, I suppose. Thanks for the notice and I'll look forward to the resolution.

Wow... I'm interested to hear what they say in response because I'm using the same fittings on my rx7 with 811 hose.

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jwmelvin said:

That's wild that they would design the collars with such little margin. Or use junk quality aluminum, I suppose. Thanks for the notice and I'll look forward to the resolution.

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These did split at their thinnest and weakest point... but like I said above, I never would have thought this could be possible. I can't believe these see that much stress once the hose is conformed to the threaded fitting, or it would be so easy to add a bit more material to compensate. It must be some kind of batch material defect.

OR, I guess I could have purchased counterfeit parts. I only ordered these Goodridge components through Pegasus Racing or hosewarehouse.com. Both are reputable companies and should be aware of potential counterfeit parts in general.

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fd3s_fan said:

Wow... I'm interested to hear what they say in response because I'm using the same fittings on my rx7 with 811 hose.

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I'm guessing and hoping that it is a very limited freak material issue. I did an extensive google search before posting this and did not see ANY issues with the Goodridge fuel lines/fittings. But, perhaps others haven't noticed this on their fittings. It's not something people routinely inspect for.

Almost four months later and I still have cracked sockets.

Goodridge finally determined that the sockets I used on the 911 hose were incorrect. The sockets for the 911 Kevlar-braided hose should have a completely smooth exterior - no notches like mine.

I'm trying to determine who is liable for this mistake as I certainly had no way of telling. Did Goodridge ship the fittings/sockets as a set to vendors, or did the vendors mis-package them when they shipped them to me?

To be continued....

Thanks for the update... I'm still very interested to hear how this turns out. I just checked my fittings on my RX-7 and only some of them have notches... (I can only see three of them without removing parts). Here is what I ordered from pegasus racing:



The 90 degree fitting definitely had notches like yours and the 150 degree fitting did not.

Just for curiosity, did they provide a torque spec?

Larry Bastanza said:

Just for curiosity, did they provide a torque spec?

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Larry, the assembly instructions are linked below. With the Teflon liner, there's no "torque" value per se - you slip the smooth inner bore sleeve over the Kevlar-braided hose and then thread that onto the threaded fitting. Once the end of the hose/sleeve makes contact with the end of the fitting, you tighten two complete turns... I guess to "fuse" everything together.

https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/document.asp?DocID=TECH00026

Looking back at the retailer website, I now notice that none of the pictured sleeves have notches on them.

Mac Attack said:

Almost four months later and I still have cracked sockets.

Goodridge finally determined that the sockets I used on the 911 hose were incorrect. The sockets for the 911 Kevlar-braided hose should have a completely smooth exterior - no notches like mine.

I'm trying to determine who is liable for this mistake as I certainly had no way of telling. Did Goodridge ship the fittings/sockets as a set to vendors, or did the vendors mis-package them when they shipped them to me?

To be continued....

Click to expand...

I'm finally remaking these lines during the winter downtime.

Only two have cracked in total (the ones pictured above). Goodridge has been very helpful and willing to either remake all of my lines or ship the parts for me to redo them. I chose to redo them because I'm anal like that.

Anyways, apparently the info provided earlier by a previous Goodridge employee on the sockets with/without notches was incorrect. Earlier designs had notches while newer ones do not. Effectively there have been no dimensional changes over the past 10+ years, and the sockets are the same for the Kevlar-braided or stainless braid hoses. So, rest easy if you do or do not have notches.

Goodridge stated they aren't aware of anyone else that has experienced the sockets cracking. I've searched extensively with google and can confirm. As politely as they could, they asked if I held the sockets themselves in a vice or clamp and then tried to thread the fitting on... stressing the socket and potentially causing failure. No, I definitely wouldn't have been dumb enough to do that.

It's troubling not having a cause identified, so I'm going to have to keep a close eye on the new connections going forward. As far as the supply and return connections on the fuel tank that I can't easily inspect, I've decided to use SS hose clamps lightly fastened on top of the anodized aluminum fittings. Dissimilar metal contact is no good, but the anodized aluminum sockets should be OK for a long time. I've had the same hose-clamped setup on all my other sockets for a year now with absolutely no sign of corrosion, so I think I'm good.

Thanks to Goodridge for the support and offer to make all of my lines at no charge to me. This is certainly a premium product (I have close to $600 just in fittings and hose), but once it leaves their factory they have to rely on the end user being competent and assembling it correctly. I'd like to think I did everything 100% correctly, but the jury is still out on that until an inspection is performed on the old cracked sockets. They didn't ask for them back, but I'm going to send them anyways. I'm also going to split a few of my old sockets with a tapered pin at different temperatures... with and without stress risers :smile: That's the material engineer in me.