RamAir95TA

Thanks for your opinion.

grendal

I'll take a little issue with this, with Volkswagen specifically. If you do a little research, you'll find that VW's are considerably better "crashers" than nearly every car on the road. GM doesn't even come close on this one.... I'd rather be strapped into my '98 Passat in a crash than my current '98 Chevy Z71 truck or my '95 Z28. Let's put it this way -- you don't need to put "subframe connectors" on a late-model VW, because the chassis doesn't flex enough to need such a thing.

Points well taken....

Quote:

Removing the rear axle sounds like a huge job but really isn't.

Hmm, I dunno about that. Heh... Most of us don't have access to a lift, 9 different types of jacks, air tools, etc. For me, I don't even know how I would get the car high enough to drop the axle in my garage. Whereas with my Dremel rotary and some cut-off wheels I could have this hole done on 15 minutes.... so you can see where the attraction to this idea comes

Quote:

If you can't handle the work, don't modify the car. BTW, this does not qualify as a "mod" that would show up in a signature. Modifications are by definition to improve the performance of the vehicle. Cutting a hole in the floor of a car does not qualify as a "mod" because it will only degrade the performance of the vehicle in one way or another.

Who's talking about mods? heh. I think most of us are just taling about replacing the piece of sh*t fuel pumps that GM put in our cars that fail prematurely... and what about thos genius engineers at GM now? Heh... their sh*tty pumps fail regularly, and yet you have to disassemble the entire rear suspension, brakes and drivetrain parts and drop the tank to get to it?.... Come on, just plain bad design..... I don't necessarily think the GM engineers on the f-car project were your braintrusts... I can't blame them entirely, I mean they were actually just given a low budget and told to modify the 3rd gen chassis to come up with something, so really we're dealing with early 80's tech, which is why it doesn't have things that are now the norm... such as access panels to the fuel sender/pump. In fact, I dare you to find ANY modern car that DOESN'T have such a panel. You have to exclude such old-designs such as the SN95 Mustang (which dates to 1979 or earlier), but anything desinged in the past 10 years or so... most definitely. The main reason I knew for sure about the Passat having the access panel is because I had to change the sender on it, and I was impressed at how easy it was.

Anywho... thanks for the info... it doesn't mean I'm not still gonna cut it I really don't know... What I do know is my fuel pump is noisy and won't last forever.... not looking forward to the idea of disassembling the entire rear of the car to get to a part that only takes 5 minutes to change.

Thanks for nothing idiots at GM

-Michael

dave1w41

Grendal,
The standard is not an access panel, I don't know how you got that idea but it just isn't the case. The cars that still have them are kind of oddball. For awhile there were lots of cars with them mostly european, or Japanese. When it comes to these access holes, typically they are seen as a liability due to fuel and fire issues. Most cars in the future won't have them GM is not by any means the only one that does not have them in most of their cars. In the future no one will have them because the fuel pumps rarely fail and there is liability cost associated with a hole that big near the fuel tank. Pumps that fail are usually killed by debris or being run dry. If you gave me a Jetta or Passat and a one-gallon can of gas, I could have the pump killed in about an hour. I would just give it enough gas to run and then run it out a couple of times. Viola! dead pump.

I don't know about VW crash testing results but all cars have to meet requirements set by the government. No one sells cars that don't meet those requirements. Subframe connectors and unibody stiffness have NOTHING to do with crash results. VW also does not make any RWD cars other than the Phaeton and that car is new. I don't know of any FWD GM cars that need "subframe connectors" because they have flimsy bodies. In fact, if there is anything that has been said about the N, W, and G body FWD GM cars, it is that they are solid.
In reality the F-Car in stock form is a car that performs very high in crash tests and is probably as safe as any car on the road from that perspective.

It makes almost no difference what brand of car you are driving when you get in a wreck. If your car is bigger and you are wearing your seatbelt, your chances of injury drop dramatically. If the car is equipped with airbags both front and side, that helps about an additional 10%. The brand on the car does not mean much if it is hit by something that has three times the mass. The smaller car always loses. Being that VW products are smaller on average than most cars in their respective classes I would bet that in the real world they don't perform as well as you think.

Don't get me wrong, VW makes some really fine and very sophisticated products. But I have seen the access hole in a Passat, Jetta, and Beetle (same as the Jetta) and they look nothing like what I see in the pictures associated with the original post. One would wonder that if they have such a high failure rate that they need a hole to lower their warranty costs, maybe they need to work on pump quality? I don't think you are working from a position of strong data but more of an opinion that VW makes great cars, and they do, but so does everyone else. I also think that you might have a perspective that GM makes cars that are of poor quality. In the past that may have been true but today GM's quality is equal or better than their competition with the exception of Honda and Toyota.

Vader

I don't know yet what I will do when my in-tank pump fails. Maybe I will cut the hole. Maybe not.

What I do know is that many cars use an access panel. Volvo uses one in the trunk, square with rounded corners, held on by two sheet metal screws. The fuel tank is over the axle, which is the best place to protect it in a crash, and GM began doing that about a decade later when their engineers figured it out. I mean these are the SAME engineers that put the pickup fuel tank on the outside of the frame so it could be squished easily and immolate the occupants. So much for the rocket scientists working at GM.

As far as the "structural integrity" issue is concerned, it is not like we are talking about an aircraft. The factor of safety applied to the torsional rigidity of the unit body is not going to be compromised by a small hatch, and certainly not when it is on the centerline of that structure.

In engineering when crack analysis is first understood, it appears that by scratching the surface of a bridge with a scriber, that it must eventually propagate a crack and collapse. Of course that isn't true - metals like mild steel have a "high work of fracture", unlike glass. A small hatch will not cause failure of the cars unitbody.

Any accident where the tank is flattened is probably not survivable, regardless of whether a hatch is cut or not. I worry more about the laughable weakness of the coupe (let alone the t-top or convertibles) in a roll-over. Not survivable. So to whine about a little hatch, when these cars can't survive a roll-over (thanks again to the overly lauded GM Rocket Scientists) is ridiculous.

iniviate

i disagree with this...

i have a friend with a 93 z28. the last time we were replacing his clutch, we noticed stress cracks developing from the corners of the shift boot hole.

that's right along the "centerline" too...

that's a hole that was designed to be there, yet it's cracking. it's stupid to think that there are NO stresses put on any part of a unibody car.... even flat thin pieces of metal.

DWoodAudio

Name two please, I can't recall EVER seeing a car, foregin or domestic that has its fuel pump in the passenger compartment, and without putting the entire fuel tank in the same passenger compartment it would be impossible to mount the "sender" in there. Thats about the most idiotic statement I've read in this thread so far, and a ridiculous way of justifying doing a cheap and dirty repair hack because you're either too lazy or too uninformed about the right way to do it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're going to work on these cars bite the bullet, spend the money and buy the FACTORY service manuals for the car from Helm. Yes, they cost around $100 but they will tell you every *proper* service procedure for the car, including some very detailed troubleshooting guides.
I look at it this way: If you want to cut holes in your cars, go right ahead. Would I do it that way? Definitely NO. I'm not going to debate the structural integrity issues with you, but cutting holes like that and patching them with screwed in sheet metal cannot possibly increase the strentgh of the panel.
I've done my fuel pump, and it does NOT require taking the rear end out of the car, it isnt as hard as everyone is whining about it being, and its a damn sight safer than poking around just an inch or two away from fuel and electrical lines with saws and rotary cutters that all produce some degree of sparks when cutting through metal.
Seems like everyone is only concerned with doing things the cheap and easy way, sometimes doing things the right way means a little more effort, and in this case its actually cheaper to do it the "right" way. It costs you nothing additional in sheet metal, screws, sealer, paint, or in repairing damaged fuel or electrical lines that you might have "found" the hard way while cutting your floor.
Just one man's opinion................

DWoodAudio

A postscript to my previous rant:

In regards to the rear end issue, it is NOT necessary to completely remove it to drop the tank. You do have to get it as low as you possibly can by disconnecting the sway bar, shocks, and brake line (yes, it means you have to bleed the rear brakes, boo hoo.....terribly hard job that took me all of 10 minutes).
You also do not need a lift in your garage (I'll admit it would be nice to have one sometimes) I did all of this with the entire car raised up on 4 jack stands, set fairly high to give me room to work. I do have air tools, can't imagine working on a car without 'em but it wouldn't be impossible to do without them, as long as you had a good long 1/2" breaker bar for things like the shock bolts. The exhaust is probably the biggest PITA, but I lucked out in having the MAC catback system, which is held together with ball flanges and bolts, it came right apart in no time.
Enough is enough. Personally I think this thread should be closed because little else can be learned from it. The people who are bound and determined to cut up their floors are not going to listen to any reasoning that suggests that it might not be the wisest method of accomplishing their repair job, and the people who are already convinced that it isnt the right way to do the job will never change their minds. It's just turning into a p*ssing match to see who can come up with the best reason for justifying their belief.

Racetronix

Just for the record Racetronix and its dealers do not recommend/condone cutting the floor pan of the car to install our kits or any fuel pump for that matter. This is for many good reasons most of which have already been covered in this thread. Many of these reasons are valid for street driven cars with external pumps and sumped tanks as well.

I know of two dealers this year who took in cars that had serious fire damage due to work that was being done around the gas tank opening. All it takes is a small spark! One car had some cutting being done for what was to be a couple hundred dollar job. Once they were finished the car needed a new fuel tank, sending unit, rear main wiring harness and bulkhead connectors, carpet, moldings, glass and paint just to name a few items. Total bill was over $3500.00 once done. The tech doing the work had no eyelashes, second degree burns and was off work for quite some time.

If someone still has the ***** to cut the floor consider using a fan blowing up under the tank to help evacuate any volatile fumes that may be trapped in pockets. Always disconnect the negative terminal of the car battery. Pray you do not cut into the wiring harness or the feed lines.

Jack
Racetronix

grendal

The "bigger cars crash better" idea is ignorant and untrue. You need to look at some ACTUAL crash test results. You will notice that the VW New Beetle actually outcrashes almost every car in the Mid-size class, yet it is a compact... how so? It has nothing to do with the vehicle's size.... If anything you're safer crashing in a light-weight car that has been designed properly. You're more likely to sustain an injury in a big stiff-frame truck than you are in a mid-size VW Passat or a mid-size Volvo S60, because they're just designed better. Period. If you've ever looked closely at these cars, driven them, and had a good look at the NHTSA's crash ratings, you'd understand this.

People that believe bigger cars are safer are the same ignorant soccer mom's driving the Navigator/Expedition death-traps with one-hand, a cell phone in the other, while sticking in a new DVD in the player for the kid's in the back seat, risking the lives of everyone on the road.

That said, I think you're also incorrect about the access panel. Yes true, they are NOT like the ones you'd have to cut in an f-body. They ARE integrated into the body, which is probably why they are perfectly safe. The Passat that I had which had this panel was a 1998 model, which was at that time a brand spanking new ground-up redesign with no parts shared by any previous model. In fact, it is mostly engineered by Audi.

Furthermore, as to FWD vs. RWD, the Passat shares an Audi platform which uses a longitudinally mounted engine, which puts the same twisting force on the car as if it were RWD... in fact, Passats come in FWD or AWD.... ever look under the hood of one? It's not mounted sideways like a Toyota. You can jack up the car by one corner and not affect the alignment of the doors... can you do that on an f-body? Heh.... I dare say no

L8r,

Michael

DWoodAudio

All of that is only partially true. New vehicles, be they large Navigators or VW Beetles are designed with more crush structure to protect the occupants in an accident. The REAL danger, and one that is rarely made mention of by the NHTSA or NTSB is disparity in vehicle sizes in a collision. Let that dim-bumb distracted mother in the Navigator run into that crashworthy VW and I pity the occupants of the Beetle. With more and more people mindlessly flocking to the current craze of behemoth SUV's and trucks, and most of them woefully unskilled drivers to begin with, we're going to be seeing more and more catastrophic crashes where people get seriously injured because their small car gets run over by either Soccer Mom or Uncle Bubba in his off road monster. Crashworthiness, crush zones, front and side airbags and 5-15 mph bumpers are all pretty useless when you have a 5 foot tall tire sitting on top of your roof.
I sort of realize how it got here, but boy did THIS subject get off topic..!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DWoodAudio

My comments definitely weren't directed towards the Racetronix guys, and if anyone needs more evidence why its a dim-bulb idea to be doing anything that has even the remotest possibility of making a spark so dangerously close to the fuel tank, the above accounts of actual things that happened during similar "repair" work should drive the point home.
My only gripe with you guys at Racetronix is that you showed up here about 2 months too late, I had already just replaced my pump with another OEM unit, but my motor is mostly stock so it delivers adaquate fuel for its needs. When the day comes that it needs more, I'll be looking you up

dave1w41

We really need to start another thread for this discussion but I digress.

NHTSA tests are barrier tests designed to measure one car against another in a given scenario. They are decent measure of crash performance and are considered valid tests. All GM cars pass them easily and so do the ones from Ford, Honda, Toyota, and VW. In the real world, crashes are often between a Lincoln Navigator and a VW Passat. Or, for the sake of argument a Chevrolet Tahoe and a VW Beetle. I for one will take the larger vehicle every time, in the real world, the larger car always wins you can't suspend the laws of physics.

The only test that NHTSA uses to rate cars against one another is the NCAP test and in that test if you compare the Passat to the Impala they perform the same. http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/NCAP/Cars/2002MidS.html
The Impala and Passat both outperform the Volvo S60. In frontal crashes a Saturn L-Series outperforms your beloved Beetle. In fact, most GM cars do. I don't know where you are getting your data but the NHTSA data isn't supporting your argument in the slightest.
In most of these ratings GM is probably filling out the average as well they should, they have more platforms and make more cars than anyone else. VW only has about 4 platforms so they should all be absolutely optimized.

I have seen all of these cars that you are talking about and when you boil it right down, they are just cars. VW is a big conglomerate just like GM and Ford and they don't have a monopoly on brains. If you think they make better cars than GM does, go ahead and drive one for 200,000 miles and let me know how much money you spent on repairs during that time. I think you will probably find it isn't better than an average car and probably cost you more.
There are plenty of cars that you can jack up by the corner and affect the alignment of the doors. That isn't a measure of crash safety. It is a very weak measure of structural stiffness and to that I say, so what?

RamAir95TA

Soooooo...

I still have my hole in my trunk. And it's fine with me. All buttoned up, can't tell it's even there.

Now if my fuel pump takes a crap on me any time in the future, it's just a few screws away.

Thumbs up in my book. If anyone else doesn't like it, that's fine as well.

There's no more need to argue this point any fiurther as far as I'm concerned. Choose your poison. I don't see the harm either way.

AlexA

I wanted to reopen this with a couple of comments as I'm going to do an intake fuel pump soon. I was talking with my mechanic (40+ years in the industry, pro-mod IHRA car, blah, blah) and I told him I wanted to put an in-tank pump in. After he was done cringing, I asked him what the deal was. He said he did a pump in a '97 TA and had a bear of a time getting the tank out. He said the filler neck is the biggest problem as it cannot be detached from the tank. I asked him what he did, he said he cut the filler tube (OUTTER tube) to give him the flexibilty he needed to get the tank down. He used some sort of slip fit ring designed for filler tubes to repair the cut. I asked about metal shards, said he used some sort of chain tube cutter, so it was completely clean cut.

ANYWAY, I told him about the access panel people were making. He liked the idea, but mentioned the car is a uni-body. He said he could design a plate to cover the hole (mentioned a lip all the way around and machine pop rivets). He was confident it would be just as sturdy. I asked him if it was dangerous, he said it can be if you don't use the right tools. My car was on the lift, and I suggested that the tank can be dropped maybe 1-3 inches by just letting the tanks straps loose (2 bolts). After looking at it, he said that would be a very good idea to give more clearance for cutting.

To reduce the chance of cutting the tank, lines, or wires, lowering the tank a couple inches would help. It looked like just jacking up the rear body (to take weight off the axle) and undoing the tank straps to let the tank down would give enough clearance (along with the fact that we now have pictures of where to cut) to safely cut the access panel. Once it was cut and there was no more fear of sparks, the system could be vented and the pump replaced.

Comments?

-Alex

shoebox

Just as a side note and FWIW, the 1999 and up tank (the different and larger one) uses a detachable two piece filler neck. I am guessing it would be a lot easier to drop the tank this way.
I have seen plenty of rubber collars that secure the filler neck to the tank on other cars.