While I was filling SHP up with E5 watching the meter racking up more pounds than usual I had failed to notice my shoes were paddling in petrol. After apologies to the lady behind the till for my old lady’s incontinence I drove to the air line and to my relief no more fuel was leaking out. The rest of my journey was uneventful and enjoyable.
This had happened to me before in another TC 21/100 Graber some thirty odd years ago in France – a perished fuel hose – and sure enough there was a tiny hole surrounded by rubber that had seen better days. In France it had meant keeping the tank no more than half full.
I wasn’t sure whether a standard fuel hose was fitted to a Graber but a call to Chris Prince with a photo of the offending article produced a new TA21 fuel hose which was exactly the part needed. Removal and refitting wasn’t too onerous and created a chance to appreciate the quality of underbody restoration completed over forty years ago.
The early cars fed the petrol into the side of the tank. This has the disavantage of a full tank leaving fuel in the feed hose which can find its way out of the filler particularly on right hand bends. This was changed for the TD21 to feed into the top of the tank and explains the intrusion on the left side of the boot space.
The continuing process of digitising archive material has produced some more period photos of the early Three Litres and a detailed article written by Nick Simpson in 1991. These can be seen on the updated page TA21 together with a downloadable register of cars.
Alvis Archive 
Thats very interesting as my grey lady seems to have the same problem this is the great thing about being a member of the Alvis club thanks ever so much for the info
That’s very interesting as I am endevouring to restore a TA/C 21. New fuel filler pipe ( among other things). Will bear that in mind. M Palmer.
I had a similar problem here in France where we have E10 as well as E5 fuel. I made tests with an early Speed Twenty using E10 fuel. The car runs perfectly but all the ‘rubber’ pipes and connections in the fuel system gave way at an early stage. I had to replace the fuel filler hose and some ‘rubber’ connections. These were replaced with industrial quality AG (Alfagomma) PVC hose and I believe the quality reference was 650AA. No problems since.
Nick Simpson.