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Sean Haas

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The ends of my hoses were too dried and crusty for me to trust that any soaking or treating would last very long (and they were beginning to split a bit on the side), so I grabbed a pair of E9 hoses to see what I could do with them. As Chris pointed out they are of a smaller diameter and about 2" shorter - but, they slid right into my existing hoses, and because they flare out at the top they seem to seal up pretty well with the inside of the e3 hose, so for now I am leaving them that way and not adding a bead of caulk. You can't even tell they are in there so I won't get points off at Pebble Beach.

If I was unable to do that my next solution was to attach a suitably sized thin rubber gasket to the top of the E9 hose with silicon caulk and use that to mount it to the drain hole, which I think would work and look pretty similar to the original setup as well. Despite being shorter I think they get low enough to drain water away from anything sensitive, and how much are we driving in the rain really anyway?

Even the new hoses are not completely closed at the bottom, there is slight gap, but much better than what I had.
 

Dick Steinkamp

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@Sean Haas thanks for the tip.

Both of my hoses are missing. I am trying to find replacements purely to fill the holes with something that would pass for original. I have no exhaust, hot engine, gas smell in the car.

You might want to try to find the source of the smell in yours. An exhaust smell would suggest an exhaust leak in the system. The only exhaust should be exiting the tail pipe and that is a long way from the cowl. Is the hose from the valve cover to the air cleaner in place?
 

Sean Haas

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Just double checked and yes its there and seems to be on tight. I went through and put chalk on the trunk and cowl seals to test if there were any places it wasn't sealing up tight, it might be that the gasket at the top (near rear window) of the trunk was not making a great seal, so I (don't laugh) stuck a strip of weather stripping along there (you can't see it anyway) and I'll see how that does - the trunk definitely tends to have that smell. I don't think there is a leak up front (just had it on the lift with my mechanics to fix something else, so we poked around) but will check again. I am also going to recheck the trunk this weekend, when I got the car the PO had done some body repair from an accident, the smell was really strong and we found the seam along the pan the gas tank is in had split, so that was rewelded, but I want to look to see if everything is still closed up. The only rust I had was in the rear shock towers which were repaired by a quality shop here who went through stuff in the trunk as well. But I don't feel like I've ever really gotten the smell completely out of the trunk so to your point it's probably something back there.
 

HB Chris

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Even though I think I know where trunk smells come from, for the life of me I can’t eliminate the gas smell in the trunk on my NK. I replaced the sending unit seal, the hoses and clamps and even now have Hal’s plastic sleeve for the hose to sending unit. I’ve never seen any gas around the tank seams either and no drips. The NK gas filler vents under the bumper like euro coupes of this period so no evap tank in the trunk, hope I figure it out someday!
 

Dick Steinkamp

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@HB Chris ... @Christoph's post #29 on this this thread indicates that the gas smell in the trunk was a common problem ("Customers had complained their clothes smelled badly when they went on holiday.") until the plastic "overflow" tank was installed. There may not be an easy solution, unfortunately, or BMW would have come up with something short of how they ultimately solved it.
 
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Dick Steinkamp

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@HB Chris

Sorry, I forgot to include the link to Christoph's info. It is now in my post above and here...


See post 23.

Christoph says European E3s got the tank for the Series 3, late summer 73. We know that US E3s got the tank at least with the 72 MY cars since my 7/71 production 72MY has the tank. Perhaps even earlier?
 

Sean Haas

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To wrap up my car does have the charcoal canister hooked up, and while the hose to the intake was on it was not on very securely, so I added a hose clamp. Between that and the additional trunk seal it seems to have solved it. Of course then I noticed the garage smelled like gas, but turns out the relatively new gas cap gasket had split. Always something but that's part of the fun right? Right?
 
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