FUEL FILLER CAP

When I originally looked at the Torero body I noticed that Parallel had fitted a flush mounted aero style fuel filler cap. I thought this weird as every other Diablo I had seen had a 'regular' cap, hidden behind a flap that opened up. I thought that maybe Parallel had maybe made a mistake on their cars, until I realised that the original SV did actually use an aero cap as standard. That told me!

Personally I prefer the aero cap anyway. Parallel certainly made it easy too- the bodyshell comes with a recess specially sized for a standard type, 4.75" o.d cap. Nearly all the caps on the market that have this o.d. will use a 3" o.d. centre cap, and will come with an 8 bolt mounting ring. I ordered mine from Demon Tweeks as I was having other stuff sent at the same time.

I was originally going to use a non-locking type as I thought they looked a bit neater. On top of that, the likelyhood of getting your fuel syphoned by thieving scum these days is pretty slim. It was only when Bill at Parallel suggested that I get a locking one simply because some vile individual may spike the fuel tank with something nasty from jealously that I thought I'd better have a locking one after all.

When you order the cap, you also need to order the funnel section too. This does not come with the cap. The Torero uses a 2" neck on the fuel tank, so I ordered a 2" funnel section to suit. The necessary nuts, bolts and gaskets come with the cap so thats not a problem. Look to pay around £90 including VAT for the cap and funnel.

Fitting is obvious really. Trim the hole in the body nicely then offer up the mounting ring with the fuel cap attached. I say attached because you don't want the cap to be at a weird angle, and if you offer it up as one piece then you can see where the little cap flap is. I fitted mine so that the flap lifts straight up, and the key barrel is directly above it. Mark the centre of the 8 bolt holes then remove and carefully drill through the body. The only other thing I did was to VERY carefully go around the inside edge of the recess with a Dremmel just so that the cap sat inside the recess properly, as it wasn't quite flush with the outside of the bodywork as I received it. Once you are happy that the cap is sitting absolutely flush with the body, and at the correct rotation angle you can remove and forget about it until the body is painted.

Oddly, the most difficult part of the fuel system was finding a piece of fuel filler pipe that was able to bend at a tight enough angle to go between the filler neck and the tank. The hose Parallel supplied was clearly never going to fit as the stuff would barely bend at all. In my humble opinion it would have been a lot easier to just make the fuel tanks with the filler neck further along by about 3 inches so that it lined up directly under the filler cap. The Parallel hose would then have worked, as would any other type of pipe. After a long search (you wouldn't believe how many places only offered the same stuff as Parallel did) I mangaged to find some pipe (which could also handle fuel) that had a very thin wall and could be bent at an acute angle. Step foward www.europaspares.com. You solved my problem for a measly £15.

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