May 26, 2006 - Starting the Exhaust and the
Beginning of the Fuel Pump Saga (2)
Since we were not bale to siphon the gas out with the tank attached
to the care we would have to lower the tank. Our theory was
the tube was coming out of the filler neck and not dropping to the
bottom of the tank. We crawled under the rear of hte car and
examined the tank strap bolts. At first glance they looked
corroded and I thought they would be difficult to remove. As I
began to loosen them I realized they weren't as tight as I thought.
I was careful to only break the bolts loose, then position a jack
below the tank and then finish removing the bolts. I didn't
get the jack exactly in the center of the tank though and it came
down at an angle. We had to hold the tank in place as we
lowered it to avoid spilling gas all over the garage (of course the
filler neck had to be removed before lowering the tank). On
the way down I noticed the fuel pump electrical wire became tight so
we stopped and unhooked the electrical connector just above the
tank. It looked like the supply and return lines had plenty of
slack so we continued lowering the tank. Just as the jack was
about as low as it could go I realized that we would have a little
bit of trouble removing the jack without sliding the tank off of it.
We finished lowering the tank and flopped the fuel tank onto the
garage floor. Luckily we did it without sloshing the gas out
of the tank.
We had a much easier time siphoning fuel tank with it on the ground.
We started off with this small tube but it took too long. We
ended up just filling up two plastic red fuel jugs like the one seen
in the picture above and pooring them into the F150. There was
no need to waste the gas even though it was 7+ months old at this
point. When we were done we estimated that we removed about 10
gallons of gas from the convertible's fuel tank. Here's a
pictre of the empty tank on the ground.
The line closest to the camera is the fuel supply line, the
return line is just behind it, the vent is to the right, and the red
connector is the electrical connector for the fuel pump.
Now that the fuel tank was empty we could move it out form under
the car and work on removing the pump assembly from the tank.
We removed the lines and slid the tank out. Getting the pump
out was a little tricky. First the metal clamp on top had a
small amount of rust on it which made it difficult to slide.
We used a hammer and a screw driver to help things along. It
finally came off and we were able to lift the fuel pump assembly out
of the tank. It did not just lift right out though, it had to
be turned and lifted out at an angle in order for the bracket, pump,
and filter bag to clear the opening. Here's the stock fuel
pump assembly.
The stock fuel pump assembly came apart easily. The hose
from the pump to the bracket looked a little worn so we decided to
replace it with the one that came in the kit.
