Alch

First of all, if you own an S14 go check the passenger side of your gas tank, just to the left of the strap and near the horizontal seam. Chances are that you have a stress fracture forming that will pass perpendicularly through that seam.

To make a long story short, I woke up to the smell of gasoline all over my house. There was a crack going through the tank, and fuel was leaking all over my garage floor. So, I siphoned out the remaining amount of fuel in the tank as best I could and then started doing some reading. (Pictures below.)

It turns out this is a more common problem than one might expect, but the only thread I've found where people have actually documented the replacement was on a forum called "TampaRacing". Well, to remove the gas tank from an S14 you have drop the rear subframe and that's where I'm stuck at the moment.

How the hell do you unbolt the flange that joins the driveshaft to the differential?
There's not enough space between the diff and the flange to fit a socket wrench in there, it feels like a crescent wrench or box/open end wrench will strip the bolts, and even with the transmission in gear, there's still a bunch of play in the drive shaft making hammering on a wrench basically useless.

In the mean time I went and picked up another gas tank from a local guy parting out his 96 S14. It also shows the early warnings of a stress fracture forming in the same location. The current plan is to sand down/scuff up the plastic really well and see if I can get it coated in Line-X bedliner. A lot of adventure bike riders will spray their plastic gas tanks with this stuff and it appears to be pretty functional, and it should ad some rigidity or strength to the tank.







Lastly, let me reiterate this: If you own an S14 check your gas tank!