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| Joined: | 09-10-2012 |
| Location: | Little Chute, Wisconsin USA |
| Posts: | 435 |
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Then, the fun began. Had a little time last night, so I thought I would knock a couple more things off of my "to do" list. If you remember, when I got my fuel tank back from the radiator shop, the fuel sender float was taped to the top (apparently they must have knocked it off as part of the reconditioning process and didn't bother to put it back in). So I decided to pull the fuel sender out of the tank so I could put the float back on and see if it made the fuel gauge work right.
The good news: her fuel gauge works now.
The bad news: along the way I had a bit of an ummm... mishap.
So, I pulled the gas tank out, took about 10 minutes. Getting pretty good at it (for future reference, I think I could pull the sender out without pulling the tank). Anyway, got the tank out, took it to the driveway. Undid the locking ring, pulled the sender out, pulled the sealing gasket out, snapped the float into the sender, put the gasket back in, put the sender back in, and put the ring on and tightened it up. Whole process took about 5 minutes.
Then, put the tank back in. Grabbed a 5 gallon gas can and went to the gas station across the street to get a couple gallons of gas (since I had to drain the tank before I did any of this, and I didn't want to put that gas back in because the tub I drained it into wasn't exactly clean). Got the gas, came back, put it in her tank... started her up... watched the gauge rise a little...YAY!
Then, I figured I would take her across the street to put more gas in. Did so, filled her up, and when I got done...
(here's where it gets fun)
as I was hanging up the hose, I got a nagging feeling... "I probably should have checked for leaks before I filled her all the way up..."
So I looked under, and gas is streaming from under the trunk at a fair rate. Opened up the trunk and it's basically filling up... eek! So... best I could come up with was to rush her back home (it's just across the street), pull her into the driveway, go grab a couple of containers, and get underneath and pull the drain plug. Drained out what I estimated to be at least half, to get the level below the sender, and then put the plug back in.
Now I'm wearing more than a little of the gas, but at least it's not leaking any more. Since the crisis was mostly averted at that point, I mopped out the trunk, hung the gassy towels outside to dry, went inside, showered, and had supper.
Afterwards, I went back out. By this time, things had dried out pretty well, so I pulled her back in the garage, got a flashlight, inspected, and as I suspected (and actually hoped), only 2 of the locking ring tabs were engaged. The third had... missed for lack of a better word. The whole ring was in at kind of an angle, so it wasn't compressing the fitting against the gasket all the way around. I could see it wasn't straight just looking at it. How I missed this the first time, I don't know. So, popped it back off, straightened it out and spun it back on being much more careful this time to make sure it was engaged properly.
Whew. Crisis averted, though I think I lost about 2 gallons of gas during all of this. The remaining fuel that was drained out went into two gas cans, which means I probably won't have to buy gas for the lawn tractor for quite a while.
I think it's all good now, I didn't fill it back up to find out yet. I want it to all dry up first. At least I hadn't installed the new trunk carpeting yet.
Moral of the story: after working on a gas tank, check for leaks before reinstalling the tank, and definitely BEFORE you fill it up.