Hey guys, heres what I have and what I want to do: My dad gave me two 1/4 braided hoses from his place of work for free (sweet!). He told me I could use them as front brake hoses or fuel line. I have 3/16 brake line on my rear brakes and I remembered people saying to keep all the brake line the same size. SO....I was gonna use these for fuel. I want to run one from the gas tank over to a hard line on the frame and one from the hard line up to the carb. I was thinking of running a 3/8 hard line on the frame rail and use adaptors to connect it to the 1/4 hoses.

My question is, can I run this size line and be ok or am I setting myself up for a stall on the side of the road due to not enough gas getting to carb?

Setup is a 302 bored 30 over, mild cam, and edelbrock 600cfm carb. No drag racing just daily driving.

 

My humble opinion: You will not get a stall on the side of the road from the1/4" hoses but you may find your engine momentarily starving for fuel at periods of WOT.
Are the hoses fuel compatible?

 

My fuel line is 5/16, hard to make 1/4 braided stretch over that plus the necking down inside.

 

Sounds like a case where something that is "free" really isn't. You be adapting up and down through out the system, which is totally set up for 5/16".

If you are running an electric pump back near the tank, I wouldn't worry about starvation.

I can't imagine anything suitable for fuel being suitable for brake hoses, what spec is it?

 

That's what I was thinking. Best to get some fuel lines made for fuel, especially modern fuel. If braided is your thing, Speedway, Summit, etc.

You wouldn't want the material swelling and blocking off your fuel supply, or worse, disintegrating and leaking fuel over a hot engine.

 

Its too small....

 

Thanks for the replies guys, I think I'll just go ahead and go with a 5/16 size line like you guys have been saying. I have some braided "sleeving" that I could put over some 5/16 rubber tubing, I might just do that

 

I had a bunch of 1/4 tubing on hand when my son and I built up a 66 Mustang. It supplies plenty of fuel.....if you run the fuel line into an open container, it flows around 2 quarts or so every minute...more than enough to run any normal sized engine at full power. The problem is vapor lock. Under the hood, the smaller lines warm up more than the bigger lines and vapor lock happens. One issue is that we put the electric fuel pump under the hood, so most of the system is under suction, which makes it even more prone to vapor lock.

When I put the truck together, I put the pump as close to the tank as possible, and I ran 3/8 fuel line. I think the 5/16 would be fine, but I was very careful to keep the lines away from hot parts like exhaust tubes.

Dan

 

Well it turns out the braided hoses my dad gave me are in fact 5/16 and gas compatible. I was looking at the hose opening and it just didn't seem like 1/4 to me so I stopped by advance auto and looked at some 1/4 and 5/16 steel line and the 5/16 matched.... Sweet