Nice, dramatic title, eh? Sorry! HAHAHA!!!

Okay, so on with my car's story...

Yesterday I got the fuel sending unit installed. I had a LOT of trouble getting the fill hose connected. It is very thick and does not like being bent into the shape needed to stuff it in there and get both ends attached. I ended up using petroleum jelly. Was this a deadly, horrible mistake that will end in my fiery death on some deserted backroad? I know that the petroleum jelly was a *good* thing on both sides of the rubber gasket to get the sending unit cap back into the tank because the FAQ says so. ;-) However, nothing is mentioned regarding the rubber hoses that clamp to the feed, return and vent lines. Since they are similar (rubber to steel, clamped into place) I went ahead and use the Vaseline because - frankly - they were really old and difficult to reinstall. I plan to replace all of them with new sometime this coming Spring. I also used the Vaseline on the fill tube hose on both ends, likewise reusing the old screw clamps.

Result:

I drove off a full tank on the highway, with periodic drops into city driving to test for stalling or hesitation. I left the fuel door in the trunk open. I took out the rear seat for a separate project. This means that I was getting some wicked exhaust smell from my car for the first ten minutes or so on the road. I adjusted my windows until I could no longer smell anything odd, knowing that if I cannot smell the exhaust that the scentless CO was probably also being blown out my rear window. I had all four windows down and gobs of fresh air blowing on my face.

I would get out periodically and climb partially into the trunk and sniff for a while. No gas odor. None. Zip.

I would - for a few moments - raise all the windows so that I could smell the exhaust coming up from the fuel door hole. Just exhaust stink. Again, zero gasoline smell.

There was no dripping or any sort of wetness on the sender cap or at any of the five hose connections.

Everything worked very well. The car seemed more peppy, too. Probably this was placebo effect, but I replaced the main pump, filter, relay, pre-pump and lots of small goodies. It seemed to have better acceleration.

The new sender float is either accurate or is messed up in exactly the same capacity as my old one. My mileage for one quarter tank averaged 28 (back of the envelope calculations) - I did not measure the MPG on the first three quarters as I was doing a lot of stop and go and hard acceleration runs to look for hesitation. Once I got it to below a quarter tank and was satisfied that it was no longer stalling out under any situation that I could create I filled it up and drove home, which was about 1:45 away. I drove that run at about 1:15 between 70 and 75, and the other half hour at 60. It took me just over a quarter tank to drive that 1:45. Very nice for such an old car.

I am pleased, to say the least.

If it dies again when hot and takes 10 minutes to cool and then restarts fine, at this point I will check the ignition amplifier.

It was not as near as hard to do as I had thought it would be. However, there were some serious curse- and oath-flinging moments during the process. Primarily, my hand will *not* fit between the axle and panhard/track bar. What looks like the parking break has a convoluted gizmo right there in the center of that space, and I did not want to remove it. So I had to get my large hands and wrists into the tiny space on either side of the cable. I cut and scraped myself repeatedly when removing and then replacing the fill tube-to-sender hose. Getting those two claps tight was a cast iron female dog. I am not smiling as I type this, either.

I also could hear brakes dragging and lots of road noise with that hatch open and the rear seat out. Very, very educational regarding what is going on underneath the rear end of my car. It is pretty well insulated from the cabin, normally. While this is a lot of work, I would recommend that others at some point remove the trunk carpet, spare, et al, and remove that cover. Then open the ski through-seat hatch and make sure the cover flap is fully out of the way. Drive around like this with all your windows open so you get no fumes. Do a lot of slow speed, stop-and-go driving around your house. You will hear all sorts of worrisome noises from your aging bushings and brakes. It is a very motivational set of sounds. You hear them. You put it up on jack stands to find these noises you never normally hear. You buy parts. As I said: very motivational...

I also recently installed some cheap "eüro" (Chinese?) tail lights, turn signal and headlamp capsules.

The car looks remarkably younger. Holy bovine!

This was in May. It had been sitting there for three years. We jumped it with the half tank that was there and it ran fine. Took her home. (She had been playing decoy while my Mother-in-Law's empty house was up for sale.)


New Chinese taillights. The centers seem to be glued in correctly. They do not feel thin or cheap; they feel and "heft" the same as the Cibie Volvo units but are made, of course, of what I hope to be a much more modern plastic. Hopefully they will not look terrible after only a few years. We shall see...


My 24 year old Cibie Volvo units, still fairly bright and with a usable beam pattern. Cracked open, the silvering was perfect. The lenses, however...


New "eüro" (again - Chinese???) lamps, these also felt the same as the originals, in both weight and sturdiness. I hope that they endure the years like the originals did. If not, they were cheap and can be replaced again. Still, for now, at least, the difference is really pleasing! The beam pattern does not seem to be quite as well defined as the stock units, but they are decent enough. Also, they seem to aim lower than the stockers. I had to aim them up more.


The method used to mount the bulbs into the capsules was both logical and obviously a cost saving device. It is not very elegant. You have to pull the bulb from the socket, place the retainer ring on the back of the bulb, clip the connector back on, then screw on the retainer ring. It is study and simply. It is also probably a good bit of the cost savings for these. It is just much less expensive to make. It is also, again, inelegant, compared to the originals.

Wade
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Mama always told me to eschew obfuscation...