Tank's Giving

Okay, horrible pun.  Guilty.  Still, I hope you all had a pleasant ThanksGiving holiday.  For those blessed with a 4 day work-stoppage weekend, I hope you were able to make the most of it.  I was able to celebrate White Friday with a large group of fellow non-consumers.  I'll talk about that another time so I can talk through how to put a fuel tank back into an early bay-window bus today.

Clearance
Before you do anything, you need to verify that there's nothing between the rear hatch and the tank compartment.  This sounds obvious, but the tank is deeper than you may think, so you need a clear shot through.  The stock wiring harness shouldn't get in the way, but if you have any customization (like, oh, I don't know... a TDI engine instead of he flat-four), you may have some wire-dangle issues.  Solve those.  Zip-ties are your friend.  Also, if your stock engine is still in, you can slip the tank around it, but everything above the heads must come off first.  That includes the intake, carb (or FI), filters (air & fuel), etc.  Its actually easier just lowering it out of the way like I described in an earlier post.  The actual removal of the stock engine is very well covered in the Idot's Guide.  If the engine is on the shop floor, make sure you have at least 1/2 of the left-to-right space clear from the floor to ceiling of the tank compartment back to the rear hatch.

slide along right side and rotate into place

Vector
Steering the tank through the rear hatch and into place is an exercise in patience.  Enter this step knowing you will have to do it many times, and you will not be unpleasantly surprised with an entire afternoon lost to wrestling your tank in.  Before you start, set the foam seal back into position.  On my TDI-powered bus, I needed to raise the right side (using my BusDepot bus jack) so I could get past the engine on the floor.
I sent the left edge in first and routed it around the engine into place.  Get the tank partway into the tank compartment and attach the level sender wire and the ground wire.  Then, the tank can settle into place with wiggling.  Slide underneath and check that you can't see the foam seal.  If you can, you can try to move it with your fingers from below, or re-set the tank.  Neither are fun, but both work.  Using fingers from below is faster, though.  You can feel when the tank is settled into place.

Assembly
Now, you can start re-connecting things.  I did them in this order: fuel filler hose, fuel vent line, fuel return line (mine re-uses one of the original vent lines), fuel feed line.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I replaced my fuel filler hose with a bent section of steel pipe from the muffler shop.  I was able to find the right size Viton hose at CarQuest, but only in straight sections.  So, I cut 2 3" collars from the hose, and I use them to abut the tank to the bent-pipe and from the bent-pipe to the filler on the side of the bus.

wire it up before final placement

Re-use your clamps only if they were in nearly-new condition.  Otherwise, they aren't that expensive, but its better that than have one fail and cause leaks.  It is a major pain swapping those clamps after everything is back in place.  Last, the hold-down straps are cinched into place.  This is a little challenging if the engine is in the engine bay, but on the floor.  Since I put a heating unit in my engine compartment, and ran the air hose forward along the left side, it really gets in the way.  Still, there's a washer and a 13mm nut (you need both).  Use a deep socket and put a vice grip on the strap so it doesn't torque as you tighten.

That's it for today.  We had a great White Friday, and I'll post about that soon, as well as the engine install headway.  Thanks for following along!