Fuel Rail removal
 

Today we were changing out the fuel pressure regulator. We were having issues with the regulator not sitting correctly when I accidently dropped the small oring into the fuel rail. Tried fishing it out with a piece of wire but had no luck and now it's not visible. It sucks I know.

We are now prepared to remove the fuel rail to try to get it out. My question is should I remove the crossover tube from the fuel rail? I really only need to get to the driver side fuel rail assy. I figure if I remove the supply and return gas lines, disconnect the fuel injectors, loosen the rail mounting bolts, the only thing left is the crossover tube. Should I go ahead and remove both fuel rails with the crossover tube intact? If I do remove the crossover tube do I need to replace the o-rings? I will start this project tomorrow, so any help would be appreciated.

This is being done on a 2000 Silverado with a 4.8L V8.

One more question, is there a certain thread lock to be used on the fuel rail mounting bolts and what is the torque spec? Is there a torqueing sequence for these bolts?

Well we didn't get any replies prior to us starting so we just went ahead and did it with the use of the Chilton manual.

We removed the top cover, throttle cable, top wire harness, FPR vacuum line, top vacuum line, and fuel supply and return lines. We slowly unplugged each fuel injector on the driver side. Cleaned all around the injectors. Removed the bracket holding the crossover tube to the passenger side fuel rail. Removed the driver side fuel rail mounting bolts and slowly starting pulling until the fuel rail with injectors popped off the engine. Slid the driver fuel rail and injectors out and started searching for the lost o-ring. Filled the fuel rail with gas trying to get o-ring to slide out thru the FPR(fuel pressure regulator) hole. The fuel rail has a metal baffle inside which made it hard to get out so we got lucky when we finally got it out. Replaced injector bottom o-rings, reused crossover o-ring and reinstalled everything back into place. FPR was installed while the fuel rail was out.

So far so good. Truck starts on first try, the surging in idle has stopped, and my 16 year old son says it appears to have more power. We will see how this works out.

Glad you figured it out. Was that your symptom , surging on the truck, no misfires ect.

I wonder if taping a small tube to the end of your shop vac would have worked.

Yes, the truck would surge in the mornings when it was first started up. The idle was very erratic, we thought we had a vacuum leak. Then it got to the point where it was having a hard time starting. It would crank but not start until the 2nd or 3rd try. None of those symptoms are present now and there's a noticeable increase in power.

Trust me, that idea crossed my mind, but since there was still some fuel in the rail, I didn't want to run the risk of catching anything on fire. I had had enough things go wrong all ready.

Glad you got it How did you figure it to be fuel regulator, don,t mind my asking?
Fuel pressure test , leaking on intake ect.
Thanks for info.

We were waiting to get a pressure gauge setup so that we could check the fuel pressure, because we thought it had to be the fuel pump or filter. We did a search on the pressure regulator and someone stated that if you unplug the vacuum line from the regulator and there's gas in that line, then the regulator is bad. Since you are pulling gas thru the vacuum hose, it doesn't regulate your fuel pressure and you have gas being fed into your engine that is not accounted for. We figured it was fairly cheap part, $42, so we would try that first. It would have been an easy 15 minute fix, but I dropped the oring.