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Bad gas?

To: Bricklin List Server <bricklin@autox.team.net>
Subject: Bad gas?
From: "William H. Whitney" <bill-whitney@erols.com>
Date: Fri, 08 May 1998 12:53:23 -0400
Hi, everyone...

Here's another theory on the Bad Gas issue I brought up a while back. 
The car in question was stored for five years and run periodically. The 
tank was never let to get below 1/2 full and then the owner only put in 
a few gallons. So the tank was also never completely full either. 
Because the car runs well for a distance indicates that the fresh gas is 
mixing with the gas already in the tank and disputes the theory of bad 
gas. Because bad gas is heavier than fresh gas and because gas is drawn 
from the bottom of the tank, also disputes the bad gas theory.

The new theory is that condensation formed in the upper empty portion of 
the tank and slowly ate a hole through the metal tube that draws gas 
from the bottom of the tank. When fresh gas is added to the tank, the 
hole is submerged and therefore the car runs well. When the gas level 
gets below the hole, the tube now starts sucking air as well as gas. The 
resulting mix of extra air in the gas causes the sputtering and 
backfiring. The movement of the car sloshes the gas around enough so 
extra gas is drawn through the hole and keeps the car going. 

The tank is still going to pulled and cleaned just to be safe, and the 
sending unit and tube will be replaced. Current question is what is the 
manufacturer of the original gas tank on a 1974? I suspect it's a 
Javelin but am not sure. This will help determine the proper sending 
unit and tube to get. Also is there anything I should know about 
dismounting the tank? I don't have a copy of the HTML for the tech tips 
in _Brickline_ and the web site is down. So I can't look up anything 
without going through each issue. If someone has the HTML file, could 
you please email it to me?

I will let you know if the above theory is correct once I get everything 
apart.

TIA... Bill.

TIA... Bill.

-- 
William (Bill) H. Whitney, VIN #624 (& mini-B for sale for best offer)
Owner, Micro Business Applications, dBase/Clipper/FoxPro consultant

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