How important is this gasket? Topic is solved

[Chuck W]

Well I found another post here that said that cars with the orange injectors did not have that retainer. Cars with blues or whites did.
I'm going out to the junkyard today to look at a recent arrival so I'm going to check this out. Seems like the two bolts hold the fuel rail down so I don't see how an injector could pop out anyway.

Yeah. It's helpful for keeping things together for assembly/disassembly, but not going to add anything for retention.

That bent tab was more likely not allowing the injector to seat properly in rail, thus causing the leak. How it got bent was another question.

Now that retainer does also hold on the pulse damper (or FPR, depending on model), so it's more needed for that, than anything.

[bronco]

gas is funny stuff . I once drove my bronco all the way to new hampshire on a hot summer day and smelled gas when I arrived.

Its a big V 8 with a carb huge flat intake manifold next to the carb is a large depression that held about 8 ounces of liquid gas merrily boiling from the heat of the engine.

You can actually boil gas without dying and I guess I had been doing so for hours . Not something I ever would repeat after seeing it done.