The gas tank is out!

And I didn't even blow up myself or my garage. :-D

Overall it was fairly uneventful even though the mounting strap bolts were pretty corroded.

I used a jack with a piece of wood on it to support the tank while I removed the strap bolts. Once those were out I dropped the tank down a bit and disconnected the fill tube. With that out, there was enough slack in the hoses to set the tank on the ground. Of course it shifted but I only spilled about a cup of gas.

Ford uses special fittings on the gas lines and the method for disconnecting them is not terribly obvious - especially when you're working upside-down under the car. Once I got the tank on the ground, I could get a clear look at them and see how they worked.

So, everything got disconnected and I took the tank outside to drain it. Important point here - make sure it's as empty as possible before beginning this whole operation. My tank had about 2.5 gallons left in it and it sloshed around no matter how carefully I carried it.

I put an empty gas can on the ground and bungee-corded a funnel to it. I had my son hold a light (this was 9:30 at night, of course) so I could "see" what I was doing and I proceeded to aim the tank discharge at the funnel.

That didn't work too well.

Gas still splashed everywhere. I'm glad I put down plastic and rags to catch it before beginning. So, my son got another, smaller funnel and held it against the tank to minimize splashing and we pointed that one at the funnel stuck to the gas can.

Success! Mostly.

We still spilled a bit but it worked a lot better this way. I'd say we got 98% of the gas into the can and the remaining spills got soaked up by the carefully positioned rags surrounding the can.

I wiped the spillage off of the gas can and set it to the side. Then I picked up all of the gas soaked rags to dispose of safely.

Feeling happy with a job well-done, I walked back into the garage and was treated to the sight and smell of a large pool of gasoline under the car. It seems that by removing the tank, there was no longer any sort of vacuum holding the gas in the lines, and despite my carefully placed bolts-in-the-rubber-fuel-lines, they leaked.

Cat litter was rapidly and liberally tossed about on the pool of gas. It soaked up the spill quickly and was swept up and set outside. Momentarily I considered seeing if gas-soaked cat litter would burn, but it was late and I figured I'd done enough dumb things for the night.

So now I have to clean and paint the tank, cover and mounting straps. I also need to test the sending unit since the gauge in the car never worked.

But I'm getting ever-so-closer to being finished with the donor and then I can finally start building my car.

Here's the dirty tank picture.



It's just getting cleaned, de-rusted and painted black. No-one will see it after it's installed so I don't see any point in putting a lot of effort into it.

Here's the tank after cleanup and paint.


And here it is installed in the chassis.


And lastly, the fuel filter mount cleaned, painted and installed.