The 20 year old plastic tubing was so brittle it fell apart in my hands. This system was installed by a licenced engineer and inspected by a licenced engineer every year for the last 19 years...
You are lucky, I guess, that you made it for 19 years. This (plastic tubing failure) is an old and widespread problem that bit a number of VariEzes not long after folks first started to fly. If I'm not mistaken, it was specifically called out for use in the early plans. By good fortune, many (nearly all?) of the plastic fuel lines that failed did so on the ground, either by being bumped or even spontaneously, rather than in the air. I know that I started flying using some type of 'super' plastic line that was specifically selected by a 'materials expert' in our builder's group who assured us that it was state-of-the art impervious to almost every solvent known to man. I got rid of it after it became seriously discolored - through its thickness - showing that fuel was penetrating into the material. Ultimately, a sample that I still had lying around became so brittle that it would 'shatter'. So much for 'super'!
This is an example of a common, well-known problem being widely recognized by numerous failures, then being corrected (almost entirely), and then drifting out of the EZ-community's 'common knowledge base' as the problem disappeared from the accident/incident list. Thanks for bringing this issue back into main stream awareness again!
Fuel lines are near the top of my annual inspection list, and they get replaced every 5-6 years regardless of how 'good' they look - cheap insurance even at twice the price, as the saying goes! Needless to say, I didn't simply replace the plastic lines with 'new plastic'. Go with real fuel tubing!
Best & blue skies,
