fuel leaking from under flywheel
 

See if I can get this right this time. Hope this is the right forum for my truck! After dealing with the "yellow drain valve" o-ring replacement, I developed another fuel leak. Seems that the fuel filter I had changed to was now leaking fuel and you could smell it thru the A/C, as you walked around the truck and small spotting on the driveway. I think I found that the o-ring was "beveled cut" and was not seating propoerly. I found another product that uses a "rectangle cut" and swapped them out. Seems that leak has gone away.
Now I have even a worse leak coming from underneath. Flows heavily out from the "dust cover" for the flywheel. I removed the flywheel dust cover to see better and found out that the fuel is dripping off of another plate(dust cover?) on the backside of the engine block(just in front of the flywheel area). What would be allowing fuel into this area and how could it be ruinning down from this platre? I cannot use the truck like this! I'm still hopeful that this is something that I can fix myself and not have to take it in to a shop. Just more money and down time! Please help!:argh:

I would say it is dripping into the valley and running down the backside. I bet if you looked on top you would see this area covered in fuel. I would look at your fuel filter again.

Thanks for taking time to send your message and input! Hope the following info will help the next guy.
Definitely getting fuel into the valley areas on top of the motor, especially on the passenger side. Everything I looked at and worked on was the passenger side of the motor. Seems that Ford has this bracket that they have used to help stabilize this fuel line. It runs from the bottom of the fuel bowl, under the regulator bracket, and travels along the block to the back of the manilfold. The bracket does not have sufficient rubber padding and after many miles of wear and tear, the bracket wins the battle and the fuel line springs a pin-hole leak! Apparently, this is the second most common leak on these 7.3 motors! The first most common is the "yellow drain valve" o-rings, which I took care of about 6 months ago. Anyway, after removing the intake tube to the turbo, I now had a better view of the bracket and removed it also. Then I turned the ignition key to the on position, and immediately the line started leaking the fuel. Obviously to do anything to the line you must first remove it.
So I did a little shopping and finally decided that I should just bite the bullet and get the part from the "stealership", which actually was only around $58.00. The part number from Ford is F81Z9b273BN.
Switched this line out and put everything back together, watching and testing for the leak during the whole process. By the way, the new line comes with the 2 o-rings that other people said were not in the package. Be sure you have new ones because you will not want to re-use the original ones!
Took a little while to do this project, but mostly because I wasn't sure exactly where to find the leak and how much stuff was going to have to be removed to make the job a little easier. Took care of my problem!

Interesting. I'll have to remember that.