Toyota Aygo fuel leak at fuel tank connector

SonOfPerdition

EDIT : 24hrs later I had a eureka moment and remembered my wife filled her car with the wrong fuel last summer and had to call out a service to drain the tank and flush the system. There's my prime candidate and it wasn't a manufacturing defect.

Lesson here is to check all the connections afterwards if you have a call out service to flush your tank.

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Strange one this, i thought I'd share something that happened tonight that I think my be interesting to motor folk, and to confirm my theory.

When my wife came home tonight she reported she could smell petrol in her 2010 Toyota aygo when she opened the window while driving. I went out and inspected underneath, exhaust, and engine bay, but could find nothing amiss. We took it for a drive and I was struggling to smell anything but thought i could get a whiff occasionally. Opening the window did seem to make it stronger. Eventually back home I noticed it was rather strong in the back so i lifted the rear seat and the smell got even stronger.

When i played with the plastic housing over the fuel pump it came off easily and bingo, the right connector looked wet and there was a very strong smell of petrol.

When I put a little pressure on the connector a spray of fuel came out and i thought it had perished. I was contemplating how i was going to fix this when i decided to see how loose it was. I was putting a bit of pressure to move it back and then decided best leave it so i reversed direction to put it back into it's original location when I then heard an audible click and felt it mate through my fingers.
I had just felt it click into place and realised the damn thing wasn't seated correctly in the first place. My jaw fell.

We've had the car since new. It's had 3 services at the garage in the first 3 years that came with the price of the car and i've maintained it ever since. I never went near the fuel pump and i'm pretty sure the mechanics in the garage had no reason to go near it.

My assumption is that it's been loose since the fitting in the factory, and always losing a small amount of fuel. The fumes from the leak eventually perished the rubber seal on the housing and the fumes leaked into the rear of the car. When my wife drove tonight with the window open the wind blew the fumes from the rear into the front and that's when she first noticed it.

I got her to start the car afterwards, I put pressure on the connector, pulling back and forth and nothing, no more leak. I'm going to recheck it every evening for the next week to be sure, and then spot check it over the coming months.

I'm staggered, could it really have been badly fitted and stayed put for 6 years and 126,000km?

SonOfPerdition

SonOfPerdition

SonOfPerdition wrote: »

the connector on the right is the one in question, this is after i have re-seated it but it looked pretty much in the same position originally.