Rear fuel leak done - fun and games

Why on earth I expect things to ever be simple I don't know!! I was so confident about this "small" job I actually took a couple of pictures along the way. Simple quickly turned to mush as usual.

But anyway, the leak is clear, if a little difficult to picture from under the car:

Even with approx half a tank of petrol I was prepared. Extract the fuel line from the perished hose and quickly insert some dowel into the hose. Fit the new piece of hose to the fuel line, then complete the job by removing the old hose completely and refitting the new piece. Couple of quick swapovers, minimal leakage. In theory!

Hahahaha.. should have known better.

First step was easy. And the replacement hose was quickly on. First problem, in the process of doing that, the vacuum seal must have broken on the fuel line and I got a face full of petrol as it leaked back and out of the new piece! I forgot about the fuel that would be there. No problem at this stage. A small drip from the fuel tank from the perished hose, but all ready to go with stage 2, so was able to go and wash off with no panic.

The next bit was the killer. Pulled off the old hose and went to reconnect with the newly fitted piece that was now attached to the fuel line. Jubilee clips ready to tighten. The outflow pipe from the tank is BIGGER. The new hose wont fit!!!. Petrol pouring out, cant see the old hose to hand!! Found it quite quickly, re-fitted temporarily. Back to a small drip. But clear that I cant just re-fit the new hose as-is.

It was clear that I needed a larger bore at the fuel tank end. Easily remedied, the new hose is quite thick, so basically scraped it out to larger size needed:

So from there, it was back to plan A. Had to hope the bore was now large enough and had a bowl of boiling water to make the hose a bit more maleable.

Went on fine (another BAD photo) and the state of the original piece now clear to see::

Re primed the fuel pump, started up the car and ran it for a while. Will keep a watch, but expect that is now fixed. Just want to warm the hose up again and push it right home in due course. But I'll know what to expect next time.