Greetings!
I'll never forecast that I'm going to have a car running by the 4th of July again. It was unwise and now I'm going to look like a slacker. I'm nearly ready to start the engine but when I was plumbing the fuel tank the thought occurred to me to check the condition of the gas tank. It had been sitting for 20 years in storage before it came to Desert Classics and there was no telling what was in there.
I drained about 6 gallons of fuel into plastic gas cans using an electric fuel pump before I could lower the tank. While taking off the filler neck I noticed a stain on the rubber hose indicating it was leaking when it was being filled. I'll replace those two pieces of hose and more.
Here's the gas tank sitting on my gravel driveway. I took a flashlight and peeked inside to discover a thick crust of crud on the tank floor. There's no way it's going to send a clean supply of gas to that fresh, fuel injected engine! Gary's already ordered up a fresh unit from The Truck and Car Shop in Orange, California, here's a link: (The Truck and Car Shop).
The fuel level sending unit was unusable as well. You can see it in this shot sitting on the tank. The float is totally absent and the pivot arm is rotted away. Gary had mentioned that his gas gauge hadn't been displaying correctly when they last drove the car. I think I'm going to stop looking for the reason why, after seeing this. I'm sure Gary has one on the way to replace this veteran.
The filler neck was in usable condition and I'll bead blast it before re-installing it. However, it looks like the last "mechanic" who worked on the fuel system used a long strip of a burlap potato sack to hold the filler neck in place. It's in pretty bad condition after all these years and I'll have to find a nice, new length of burlap potato sack to replace it. Just kidding, of course; there's a bracket for a screw to hold it securely. The gas cap has a knurled edge so that your hand can grip it to twist it off, but the knurled surface is more than 50% smoothed off so it gets replaced too.
So you see, although I had nearly everything else ready to go for the initial startup, I'm thwarted by decayed components. I really should have checked the tank back when I was working on the rear axle, so it's my fault. I'm just glad I remembered to check the tank before I began pumping gas from it through the new fuel pump & filter and into the freshly rebuilt engine.
It may not be running by the 4th of July like I forecast, but when it runs in the near future, it's going to stay running because nothing is going to upset that flow of fuel!
Thanks for looking!
Doug
I'll never forecast that I'm going to have a car running by the 4th of July again. It was unwise and now I'm going to look like a slacker. I'm nearly ready to start the engine but when I was plumbing the fuel tank the thought occurred to me to check the condition of the gas tank. It had been sitting for 20 years in storage before it came to Desert Classics and there was no telling what was in there.
I drained about 6 gallons of fuel into plastic gas cans using an electric fuel pump before I could lower the tank. While taking off the filler neck I noticed a stain on the rubber hose indicating it was leaking when it was being filled. I'll replace those two pieces of hose and more.
So you see, although I had nearly everything else ready to go for the initial startup, I'm thwarted by decayed components. I really should have checked the tank back when I was working on the rear axle, so it's my fault. I'm just glad I remembered to check the tank before I began pumping gas from it through the new fuel pump & filter and into the freshly rebuilt engine.
It may not be running by the 4th of July like I forecast, but when it runs in the near future, it's going to stay running because nothing is going to upset that flow of fuel!
Thanks for looking!
Doug
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