Sealing the Gas Tank

Circumstances (the magic triumvirate of good weather, time off, and motivation) aligned themselves properly last weekend and I finally sealed up Ludwig's gas tank.

I been hypnotized! from stirring the POR-15. If you do this, stir it, don't shake it. POR-15 is the anti-007. Then you pour it in the (taped up except for one hole) tank, tape up the last hole, and slosh it around so it coats the inside all even-like.

Then you dump all the excess into an empty cat litter container (or equivalent).

After it drained for half an hour I looked inside and didn't like what I saw. My sloshing technique had been wanting, leaving some thin spots. The directions say not to do two coats, but I figured that it hadn't cured yet (it takes 96 hours), and so a second sloshing wouldn't count as a "coat". I dumped the POR-15 in again and revised my sloshing thus:

This time around it looked good. I think.

While the tank's out you might as well check out the filler neck, especially if your bus smells kind of fuelly after fillings.

First you unscrew the ring that holds the neck on up there where you fill 'er up. Then you pop off the "pie plate" (above) so you can get at everything. Some punk vandal had been there first. Honestly, I don't remember doing this.

Then you just pull the whole works out at the bottom end. Aha! Hence the fuelly smell at fillings. I put on a new one.

I thought this was cool, the evidence of 36 years' worth of gas nozzles.

Apparently VW didn't seal gas tanks at all after a certain year (if they ever did; I don't remember), so if you seal yours it'll be better than new! Go for it. Full instructions here.

As long as they spell your name right

Junkyard find in Arlee. As the kids say these days, "FAIL."

One Ally, Two Axis

It's unfortunate but it looks like this Land Rover Series IIa (I think?) just sits.

There are so many FJ40s around here that I could probably start a separate blog for them. I won't, but I know 01Melcher, 02McDonald, and at least one of Big Blue's Drivers like them (I do too) so I'll put one here on occasion.

This strange beast (the one on the right, that is) is owned by some trustafarian friends of some neighbors (also trustafarians). I guess it's pretty cool, being diesel and all, but god help you if your oddball Benzo fails you out in the bush someplace. But then I'd imagine the furthest afield a trustfunder's Mercedes-Benz G-Class ever gets is the parking lot at Sasquatch. (No offense.)

Two thousand two hundred twenty-two

We'd only had Gertrude for a little while before we got her odometer fixed, so we consider "0" on it to be mile 0 of our ownership of her. Here's hoping she'll get to 22222 without much trouble.


Happy 2222 day, Gertie!

Round Three

There is probably a contingent of ACVW owners out there who scoff at the idea of having some guy come help you with your car. I suspect many of the members of that contingent have other things in common as well: their newest (i.e., "real") car is much much less than 36 years old, and they don't know about ACVWs nearly what they think they know. Me, I know I don't know. And, these cars are our cars; we're living without net. So I like having Colin stop by. This was year three.

After the unfortunate demise of the Road Warrior last year on the high plains of Eastern Colorado, Colin decided to press the BobD bus (~46,000 miles) into service. I wanted a better picture of his arrival but he caught me off-guard by coming in from a non-standard direction.

I was so ready to be proud at how I'd cleaned and organized the garage, but since it was a ghastly 80F and achingly sunny, Colin preferred that we stay outdoors and work on our melanomas. Ludwig's engine still being in the hands of one Rocky Jennings of Walla Walla, we set to work on Gertrude. There was all that trouble with the fuel hose, and when she finally just wouldn't start a few weeks ago, I assumed it was a fuel starvation issue (I'd installed hose with a too-small diameter). Nope. Colin tracked it down in about 40 seconds to poorly adjusted points, and she was running. A diagnostician I ain't.

But she still wasn't running quite right--lots of stumbling at the demand for power; running very rich--so we tore tore tore in and got very intimate with Bosch D-Jetronic fuel injection.

This isn't screwing around, it's how the Bentley says you're supposed to test a manifold pressure sensor for vaccuum. Note my serious face. 

There was a lot of multimeter action which I was glad to take part in because we fuelie owners especially need to know how to run these things. At one point Colin said something about his disappointment at having brought zero expertise to the situation. Uh, what? The car runs better than it ever has since we've owned it. Colin left at about 830pm with a word to try a cold start in the morning. If the start was good, he'd be on his way. If it was bad, he'd come back that afternoon.


It was good.