This was actually a pretty quick day. The tank gave us a little trouble, but it only took about half an hour to get it off the car. This was a pretty big event in my mind.

We did have one hiccup. There was about 3 gallons of gas in the tank when we started. I didn’t see any sense in wasting that fuel, so I grabbed the syphon hose and shoved it down through the gas cap and and shook the hose to get it started. For some reason it didn’t find any fuel, so after about 5 minutes of nothing I decided to take the hose out and try again one the tank was off of the car. I gave it a quick pull and when I did the hose came out, but the brass end that actually does the syphoning popped off the hose and got stuck in the tank. This was not good mainly because the hose wasn’t mine.

We proceeded to remove the tank from the car. Once the tank and the car were disjoined, it was time to retrieve the brass end to the hose. This was harder than it sounds. The tank was rusted enough that we couldn’t unscrew the panel that holds the fuel filter and sending unit. This is really the only way into the tank. First we tried the screwdriver which I mentioned was not successful. Next we tried to chisel the bolts off, this did not work either. Next, my dad grabbed the power grinder. This seemed like a bad idea. I didn’t think grinding off bolts and creating a whole mess of sparks was a good idea for a gas tank. After a few minutes, thankfully, my father agreed. I offered to just buy a new hose but my old man was determined to get that brass nozzle out of the tank. This time he reached for the air chisel. This too seemed a bit risky, but low and behold, after a few minutes of pounding away, the chisel ate a huge hole in the tank. I didn’t think to take a picture of the destroyed tank, but I’ll get one next time I’m out at the shop.

No video of the gas tank coming out. Too bad really, I was going to add some real dramatic music and play it in slow motion.