They Can’t All Be A Garden Party

8/9/2025

I’ll preface this with a message I sent to some friends last night:

I gotta tell you guys about this massive comedy of errors I’ve been through over the last week. I decided I was going to replace my dodgy plastic oil pressure line with a snazzy steel braided tube. Settled on 3AN as the standard, got the adapter to connect it to the block. No problem at all. It’s even the right length. Plumbed it through the firewall like a champ.

And then I spent the last six days trying to figure out what [expletive deleted] size the male input on the back of the gauge is. Like… I’ve purchased and returned no fewer than 10 adapters. Finally today I took the gauge to ACE and stood in the aisle trying nuts until I found ones that fit – turns out it’s 5/16-24 OR M8 – M8 threaded easier. Sooooo trying to find a metric to 3AN (which is still SAE) adapter is nearly impossible… so I noticed that because the back of the gauge is a pressure fitting, it has a lower thread too – that one is 7/16-20

Which is 4AN. So I need a 4AN to 3AN reducer.

[Insert profane statement here]

This all started with what I assumed would be a really easy swap – and turned into maybe the biggest nightmare I’ve had so far with this car.

At first I thought, hey why not? I’ll replace the line AND the gauge – so I purchased:

A new gauge
A 4AN steel braided tube (this was accidental)

After realizing I bought the wrong sized tube, I bought:

A 3AN steel braided tube
1/4 NPT to 3AN adapter for the engine block end

Nothing fit the gauge. Or the old gauge.

That male adapter is a super weird size, man. I even considered that it could be a British standard. In the end, it’s just… metric. 8mm or M8

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This morning I received a 4AN to 3AN reducer – and it weeped like a Meryl Streep movie. I nearly gave up and installed a new plastic tube – just to get the damn thing running – but pulling a new plastic tube through the firewall crimped it so bad as to be useless.

Now I’m stuck.

BUT as mentioned earlier – if you remove the nut at the bottom of that port, you have a 4AN-sized thread.

Remember that 4AN tube I accidentally bought? It worked. IT WORKED.

I HAVE HAD THE PARTS I NEEDED FOR A WEEK NOW.

The new gauge – not mounted yet, but that’s a Tomorrow-Brian problem.

The engine block end of the cable.

I let it run for a while and everything seems good, but I won’t mount it until I’m sure.

OH! I almost forgot – I put in a new fuel filter!

I went for a transparent fuel filter this time so that I can see the quality of the gas tank and lines. If the filter gets gross over time it’ll be an indicator of another piece I need to replace.

When I put in the new fuel filter it literally sprayed gasoline everywhere. See if you can guess why from the next picture.

Back to O’Reilly’s for some 1/4 inch fuel line! I’m on a first name basis with them now. Yesterday the lady let me go into the backroom and sit on the floor and try on all their random adapters (none of which worked).

Everything feels askew right now, and I hate that, but I think it’s inevitable.