Itinerant Air-Cooled

If it were me, I would just put about 4 feet of "dog chain" in there with some really aggressive cleaner (like POR 15 "Marine Clean" or KBS "Klean") with really hot water and shake it up for a good while. Rinse it good.

I would then inspect the inside of the tank and repeat the cleaning & shaking if needed. I would not coat the inside of the tank with any of the epoxy products out there.

Might want to shove a hair dryer in there to get it to dry out faster.

or a leaf blower!! +1 on not using any more paint inside your gas tank. your tank is not going to rust much, if it sits full :)

It was fascinating to see your approach to the heater tube and valve work. Real sorry to see you've had such trouble with the fuel filter clogging though. Glad that'll be taken care of pretty soon.

"Gas tank removal" is what I saw, on Sunday coming. What is the plan? Is there another tank, repro or used available, or are you going to subject this one to a Colinoscopy, followed by a Colinization?

Jivermo wrote:"Gas tank removal" is what I saw, on Sunday coming. What is the plan? Is there another tank, repro or used available, or are you going to subject this one to a Colinoscopy, followed by a Colinization?

This one gets cleaned. No way am I putting in any repro.

Already annoyed with the 1,000 mile brazilian spring plate bushings (installed July 21st) from Wolfsburg West looking way more worn than the originals at 59,000 miles. Torsion bars were at 21 1/2* , now at 23*. Somebody screwed up somewhere in this car's assembly because the diagonal arm/spring plate/wheel bearing housing bolts got beaten pretty badly by some one cranking on the diagonal arm to set the camber.
New Rule! Never attempt to remove any one of the four bolts without first loosening all of them (so the threads can escape any potential entrapment by a spring plate hole edge or a diagonal arm hole edge or a wheel bearing housing hole edge).
Left side camber was too negative. Here's how I knew:
Right tire showed perfect centering of highway wear to 1/4" from the edges of both the inboard and outboard sipes. Left tire showed no contact at the outboard sipe and a good 1/4" down the side of the inboard sipe . After jacking the rear, I measured the vertical face of the drums and found the right drum at exactly 1/2* positive camber and the left drum at 0*. Thus, left is getting 1/2* positive camber tomorrow. Don't know if I can fix that without a pipe wrench here in the forest. Have an assortment of wood pieces, a bottle jack, and various pry devices to see if I can get camber correct on this poor overladen Pig a L' Orange.
Photographs when it gets light out.
Colin

Amskeptic wrote:

Jivermo wrote:"Gas tank removal" is what I saw, on Sunday coming. What is the plan? Is there another tank, repro or used available, or are you going to subject this one to a Colinoscopy, followed by a Colinization?

This one gets cleaned. No way am I putting in any repro.

Already annoyed with the 1,000 mile brazilian spring plate bushings (installed July 21st) from Wolfsburg West looking way more worn than the originals at 59,000 miles. Torsion bars were at 21 1/2* , now at 23*. Somebody screwed up somewhere in this car's assembly because the diagonal arm/spring plate/wheel bearing housing bolts got beaten pretty badly by some one cranking on the diagonal arm to set the camber.
New Rule! Never attempt to remove any one of the four bolts without first loosening all of them (so the threads can escape any potential entrapment by a spring plate hole edge or a diagonal arm hole edge or a wheel bearing housing hole edge).
Left side camber was too negative. Here's how I knew:
Right tire showed perfect centering of highway wear to 1/4" from the edges of both the inboard and outboard sipes. Left tire showed no contact at the outboard sipe and a good 1/4" down the side of the inboard sipe . After jacking the rear, I measured the vertical face of the drums and found the right drum at exactly 1/2* positive camber and the left drum at 0*. Thus, left is getting 1/2* positive camber tomorrow. Don't know if I can fix that without a pipe wrench here in the forest. Have an assortment of wood pieces, a bottle jack, and various pry devices to see if I can get camber correct on this poor overladen Pig a L' Orange.
Photographs when it gets light out.
Colin

I'm excited to read about how the tank cleaning goes. Thanks for teaching me that it's possible to clean fuel filters if one runs into a problem out there in the boonies.

a lot of gems in this thread!

Tim

so it was Saturday night. SGKent has had his evening night cap of Gran Marnier and while doing so canned 3 jars of great spaghetti sauce made from home grown tomatoes. And as SGKent slips off to sleep Sunday morning there is no Colin present so his bus can be cool tomorrow morning when we pull the engine. Colin - what are you thinking? I hope we see you tomorrow morning early so we can get started on this by noon after the motor cools off. What Colin does not also realize is that it was over 100F here today. All that heat from his bus is going back into the garage and instead of it being a nice cool 75 to work in there, the AC will be overwhelmed and it will be a balmy 95 in the garage because of all that engine heat. Time to put this puppy to bed. Supposed to be 102F tomorrow. thru Tuesday. Got chores early before it gets hot.

Looking forward to this report! I would so love to be out there to participate in this gas tank endeavour. Ambient heat I can work with fine, hot engine, not so much. Best of luck...I want to see what all comes out of that wicked gas tank.

Jivermo wrote:Looking forward to this report! I would so love to be out there to participate in this gas tank endeavour. Ambient heat I can work with fine, hot engine, not so much. Best of luck...I want to see what all comes out of that wicked gas tank.

I am on my way. As per the request to have as little fuel in the tank as possible, I am in sheer hell as the tank concentrates the grounds more and more densely. I am down to cleaning the filter every four miles again, and once, I didn't even get out of the damn parking lot when the engine died due to some new pebble o' death.

I so look forward to having this behind me (will photograph the inside of the tank for you).

You have no idea the hell of the last two days in the forest doing those spring plate bushings, suffice to say I did perhaps comment in passing,

"F*** You, You Cosmic Clown Creator of This Filthy Pine-Needle-Strewn Universe, what the f*** are you trying to teach me, perseverance? F*** perseverance when it is all useless service to stupid unfathomable idiotic grotesquely meaningless filthy stupid decaying nonsense going NOWHERE, LIKE THIS F***iING STUPID BOLT, I WILL KILL MYSELF RIGHT HERE TO SHOW YOU I REFUSE TO PERSEVERE, SO THERE!!!"


There are so many things wrong with this picture . . . :

3:30 - Colin made it. Apparently several miles per filter clog. The Whole House Fan and a floor 24" fan cooling the bus now as Colin showers to get rid of all the gas and grease from the ride down. Once we all take a breather the bus should be cool and we can start the engine and tank removal process.

The idea of a scrubbed tank & fresh square filter sounds so good.
& I'm not even OCD. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It's 7PM now so the engine should've been removed along with the tank and cleaning the tank completed. Is it all back together?

thank goodness there are a few days before the next appointment. I would imagine that if this is the first time this motor has been removed, there may be a few things to address along the way other than just the tank. then again, maybe not. either way it's one that I hope is well documented. very few of these left in such original condition.

Is he gonna take the engine out? That's the SOP, but I think he got someone else's tank out a few years back, engine in, as proof of concept. If NW's engine hasn't been out before for reals, he might do it again.

Type 4's of the Volkswagen bus variety are easy enough to drop a few inches to remove a gas tank. Rightfully so Colin might find some "other projects," but it can be done efficiently roughly in situ. Dual carbs would have to be removed, along with air filters, and on FI engines, the s-boot and up has to come off, as well as a polite care-taking of the resistor packs and double relays.

Robbie