I recently decided to have the fuel strainer replaced while hoses were being done on my 89 944 turbo. What seems like a straight forward maintenance is turning into a big project I didn’t want to be in. The sleeve came off of the strainer when it was removed. So I bought a sleeve repair part from 928sRUS. My mechanic installed it and fuel was still leaking. We figured it was the part not sealing the tank but noticed there was a small crack at the top of the flange. What are the best options in my case? Should I look for a replacement tank? Any repair alternatives?
It seems like I would have to look for a used tank. I think they are NLA. Also it seems like a big job to drop the tank. Are there any while you’re in there jobs to do in addition to the tank since the transaxle need to be dropped?
I hate to give up on the car after just rebuilding the suspension. Car has 78 k miles.
Fuel tank question
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dr bob
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Almost a decade ago, a local 928 owner suffered a similar fate. I thoroughly cleaned the opening and scuffed it with coarse sandpaper. Cleaned the insert too, coated the insert and the nozzle with JBWeld. Then installed the original bung back in using a bit of all-thread, some washers and a handy bushing driver to pull the insert into place from the inside out. I added a narrow (like 8mm/5/16" wide) hose clamp around the plastic to clamp the insert, and let it dry for a few days.
I haven't looked hard at Roger's repair piece, but you might find it a little easier to use it vs. the original insert.
The biggest challenge with the fix I did was convincing the owner he wouldn't need to scrap the car.
I still have the all-thread and washers/bushing tooling someplace, and can take a picture or two if it will help. It wasn't rocket science, just planning, prep and persistence. IIRC I still have the pics I took of that original installation. I did invest in a couple fresh new tubes of JBWeld just to be sure.
I haven't looked hard at Roger's repair piece, but you might find it a little easier to use it vs. the original insert.
The biggest challenge with the fix I did was convincing the owner he wouldn't need to scrap the car.
I still have the all-thread and washers/bushing tooling someplace, and can take a picture or two if it will help. It wasn't rocket science, just planning, prep and persistence. IIRC I still have the pics I took of that original installation. I did invest in a couple fresh new tubes of JBWeld just to be sure.
dr bob
1989 928 S4, black with cashmere/black inside
SoCal 928 Group Cofounder
928 Owner's Club Charter Member
Former Ex Bend Yacht Club Commodore Emeritus
Free Advice and Commentary. Use At Your Own Risk!
1989 928 S4, black with cashmere/black inside
SoCal 928 Group Cofounder
928 Owner's Club Charter Member
Former Ex Bend Yacht Club Commodore Emeritus
Free Advice and Commentary. Use At Your Own Risk!
Thank you for the insight. The sleeve from Roger appears to be fitting well. Not sure what is causing the leak. Perhaps I should clean up the mating surface on the outside where the orange seal from the strainer meets the tank. I will try the JB weld and clamp over where the small hairline fracture line is on the tank. I guess I have nothing to lose at this point since I was thinking of getting a used tank. Just the thought of having the work done makes me want to try everything else. The leak after the install of the sleeve and strainer was quite significant.
I had this same problem with mine and after a bit of reading and seeing others experiences with the 928 kit (which I don't think quite fits flush on our tanks), I went a different way.
1. The liquid sealing is done by the rubber seal on the outside that fits to the strainer housing.
2. Cut off the raised edges on the outside which then allows you to get a jubilee type clip/ band tight around the outside
3. Insert the metal threaded insert as it was before, and hold it in place from inside the tank (remove the sender to do so)
4. Gently tighten the jubilee band just tight enough to stop the insert from spinning when you screw in the housing
5. Screw in the housing
If all of the above is in place you should be able to tighten the strainer housing enough to get the rubber seal to do its job. No sealant needed and no sealant works on this tank material anyway. Mine is still leak free 2 years later. Hopefully the above makes sense as it is from memory when I did it. I left the jubilee band in place.
1. The liquid sealing is done by the rubber seal on the outside that fits to the strainer housing.
2. Cut off the raised edges on the outside which then allows you to get a jubilee type clip/ band tight around the outside
3. Insert the metal threaded insert as it was before, and hold it in place from inside the tank (remove the sender to do so)
4. Gently tighten the jubilee band just tight enough to stop the insert from spinning when you screw in the housing
5. Screw in the housing
If all of the above is in place you should be able to tighten the strainer housing enough to get the rubber seal to do its job. No sealant needed and no sealant works on this tank material anyway. Mine is still leak free 2 years later. Hopefully the above makes sense as it is from memory when I did it. I left the jubilee band in place.
Last edited by nick_968 on Sat Feb 21, 2026 6:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
I left the band on to see how it went but in theory if you have managed to stop the metal insert spinning while you get the strainer housing to tighten enough to get the rubber seal to work you should be good. My band is still on there 2 years later!
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dr bob
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I left the band clamp in place.
The original install includes the sleeve molded into the tank. As @nick_968 points out, the original sealing is via the neoprene ring gasket sandwiched between the strainer and the lip on the tank nozzle. With that split lip from drawing the seized sleeve out, the ring gasket will no longer make that seal. At this point, the JBWeld does the sealing between the sleeve and the tank. I installed the strainer fitting with some Teflon pipe joint sealing paste, and snugged it into the sleeve with a new ring gasket. The ring gasket offers a bit of loading on the thread. Several years in it was still sealing fine when he sold the car. Were I more concerned, I might have fitted an o-ring between the sleeve and the filter fitting, tucked inside the lip to be compressed directly. But no need.
Roger's repair fitting wasn't yet to market when we did the fix. Our recovery alternative at the time was a replacement tank. Early 928 car, 1978 IIRC, so tanks weren't exactly plentiful.
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Were I facing a similar challenge today, I'd also be looking hard at internal pump options installed from the top. On the 928 anyway, the sender comes out that way. So an issue of finding a suitable pump in a carrier that fits the opening in the top of the tank. For the 928 anyway, it would also need a nozzle for the bypass return from the FPR. About 400HP worth of flow at 75PSIG would get the job done on my own car.
The original install includes the sleeve molded into the tank. As @nick_968 points out, the original sealing is via the neoprene ring gasket sandwiched between the strainer and the lip on the tank nozzle. With that split lip from drawing the seized sleeve out, the ring gasket will no longer make that seal. At this point, the JBWeld does the sealing between the sleeve and the tank. I installed the strainer fitting with some Teflon pipe joint sealing paste, and snugged it into the sleeve with a new ring gasket. The ring gasket offers a bit of loading on the thread. Several years in it was still sealing fine when he sold the car. Were I more concerned, I might have fitted an o-ring between the sleeve and the filter fitting, tucked inside the lip to be compressed directly. But no need.
Roger's repair fitting wasn't yet to market when we did the fix. Our recovery alternative at the time was a replacement tank. Early 928 car, 1978 IIRC, so tanks weren't exactly plentiful.
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Were I facing a similar challenge today, I'd also be looking hard at internal pump options installed from the top. On the 928 anyway, the sender comes out that way. So an issue of finding a suitable pump in a carrier that fits the opening in the top of the tank. For the 928 anyway, it would also need a nozzle for the bypass return from the FPR. About 400HP worth of flow at 75PSIG would get the job done on my own car.
dr bob
1989 928 S4, black with cashmere/black inside
SoCal 928 Group Cofounder
928 Owner's Club Charter Member
Former Ex Bend Yacht Club Commodore Emeritus
Free Advice and Commentary. Use At Your Own Risk!
1989 928 S4, black with cashmere/black inside
SoCal 928 Group Cofounder
928 Owner's Club Charter Member
Former Ex Bend Yacht Club Commodore Emeritus
Free Advice and Commentary. Use At Your Own Risk!
What type of JB weld would you recommend? I took a closer look at the leak today. I wasn’t able to remove the original sleeve so I stuck with the one from Roger. I noticed that the leak is coming from what seems like a split in the flange. When I put a towel over that crack line the drip on the bottom of the strainer stopped. I am going to try and JB weld the crack and hold it together with a clamp and see how it goes.
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dr bob
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The one I used is 8281, and the intent was to place the sleeve in the tank nozzle and get a full seal there, so no chance of fuel passing around the outside of the sleeve where it fits in the tank nozzle. During the installation, I used a fixture to let me pull the sleeve from the inside outwards into the nozzle, so some of the epoxy was pushed through and squeezed at the outer end to support the drawn lip at the outer end of the plastic tank nozzle. Absent seating the sleeve so tight against that outer lip, I'm not sure how well a seal would ever work with that crack even if repaired.
I guess I'm trying to figure out how the end of that nozzle ended up split if you didn't do it drawing the sleeve out of the tank as my local clinic car owner had done. He had drawn it out when it started to spin in the tank. He started trying to tighten it to solve a drip at the ring gasket, but instead the sleeve broke free. From that point he was doomed to a bigger effort. I fab'd a clamp that would hold the sleeve well enough to get the fitting out of it on the bench without distorting it, so the process wasn't as bad as it might have been. The 928 has a small in-tank pump inside, attached to the inner fitting, adding some fun to the whole exercise.
On your car, without being able to make sure there's a full seal between the sleeve and the tank, I'm not sure I'd put much faith in what's would really be just a dab of epoxy in that crack, with the ring gasket over it and trying to seal against it with that crack even with the repair.
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In my deep dark past, my father's ag chem company worked with a German PE resin company to gain US Coast Guard certification for shipping hazardous materials in blow-molded plastic drums. Very similar high-density, high molecular weight PE plastic as later used in our fuel tanks. For the Coast Guard demo, the drums needed to survive a series of five-story (20 meters) drops onto a concrete pad, filled of course, and not leak. Several of the test drops needed to have initial impact right on the corners where the plastic bungs were fitted. Then a second series of the same drops, this time with the contents at 0ºF. No leaks.
Consider, as we make repairs to a similar-technology fuel tank, how well our fix would survive a similar impact test in a car crash without leaking.
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For the record, the Coast Guard inspectors still weren't completely satisfied that we could safely ship some pretty serious poisons in the plastic drums. We ended up doing a burn test on a barge in Los Angeles harbor with drums filled with gasoline. The steel drums heated and exploded violently when they expanded and finally burst. The plastic melted in the heat and the fuel inside burned predictably, minus the explosions. Approval was ultimately granted.
I guess I'm trying to figure out how the end of that nozzle ended up split if you didn't do it drawing the sleeve out of the tank as my local clinic car owner had done. He had drawn it out when it started to spin in the tank. He started trying to tighten it to solve a drip at the ring gasket, but instead the sleeve broke free. From that point he was doomed to a bigger effort. I fab'd a clamp that would hold the sleeve well enough to get the fitting out of it on the bench without distorting it, so the process wasn't as bad as it might have been. The 928 has a small in-tank pump inside, attached to the inner fitting, adding some fun to the whole exercise.
On your car, without being able to make sure there's a full seal between the sleeve and the tank, I'm not sure I'd put much faith in what's would really be just a dab of epoxy in that crack, with the ring gasket over it and trying to seal against it with that crack even with the repair.
------
In my deep dark past, my father's ag chem company worked with a German PE resin company to gain US Coast Guard certification for shipping hazardous materials in blow-molded plastic drums. Very similar high-density, high molecular weight PE plastic as later used in our fuel tanks. For the Coast Guard demo, the drums needed to survive a series of five-story (20 meters) drops onto a concrete pad, filled of course, and not leak. Several of the test drops needed to have initial impact right on the corners where the plastic bungs were fitted. Then a second series of the same drops, this time with the contents at 0ºF. No leaks.
Consider, as we make repairs to a similar-technology fuel tank, how well our fix would survive a similar impact test in a car crash without leaking.
------
For the record, the Coast Guard inspectors still weren't completely satisfied that we could safely ship some pretty serious poisons in the plastic drums. We ended up doing a burn test on a barge in Los Angeles harbor with drums filled with gasoline. The steel drums heated and exploded violently when they expanded and finally burst. The plastic melted in the heat and the fuel inside burned predictably, minus the explosions. Approval was ultimately granted.
dr bob
1989 928 S4, black with cashmere/black inside
SoCal 928 Group Cofounder
928 Owner's Club Charter Member
Former Ex Bend Yacht Club Commodore Emeritus
Free Advice and Commentary. Use At Your Own Risk!
1989 928 S4, black with cashmere/black inside
SoCal 928 Group Cofounder
928 Owner's Club Charter Member
Former Ex Bend Yacht Club Commodore Emeritus
Free Advice and Commentary. Use At Your Own Risk!
Thank you for the reply. I really am not sure how that crack ended up being there. The replacement sleeve from 928sRUS fits quite snugly in the tank nozzle. I will try a dab of JB weld to see if I get lucky sealing the crack line. I am now contemplating to get a short term fix so I can look for the appropriate replacement tank replacement