Here’s another nice Bugeye success story.
At the request of the longtime owner, we picked up the car above in Pittsburgh about eight weeks ago. It had a worn interior, wouldn’t go more than 30 miles without dying and didn’t ride very well. Now it drives great, has a new top and interior and about 100 repairs/improvements have been completed. It’s fully sorted and ready to be loaded into an enclosed trailer for the trip back home. Don’t be confused by the title of this post… DO this to your Bugeye Sprite! This client turned his old friend into a much more useable asset he can trust and enjoy! (And we can pick up your car anywhere in the USA if you would like us to perform a similar transformation on your favorite old english sportscar.)
Now on to the title of the post… one of the issues we addressed was a fuel tank leak at the sender. This is a common problem. It’s not easy to seal the sender into the tank and thus many fuel tanks leak at this gasket. To access the sender, you have to drop the tank from the trunk floor, and thus many tanks don’t get the maintenance they need. If you don’t have a lift, it’s a hassle to drop the tank while on your back.
To make matters worse, if you get it wrong and find that your gasket still leaks after you’ve wrestled the tank back into position, the last thing you want to do is take it apart all over again. But every time you fill up the tank, the sender gasket will allow fuel to fill the little well around the sender (see the photo of the new product below, the sender and well is roughly in the upper center of the photo) and that pool of gas will stink up your garage pretty effectively until it evaporates or runs down the sides of the tank. Look for tracks on the sides of your tank… those indicate a leak and that fuel has been running off the top of your tank and streaking the sides.
To fix this problem once and for all, make sure to use ethanol-proof VITON gaskets. There are two on every sender, and they both need to be VITON. Discard the cork gaskets that come with the tank, or sender. Both of them will leak eventually. Check those out in our catalog by clicking here.
Make sure to seal the screw heads that hold the sender in place. And you need to pressure test the tank (gently!) before installing it, to make sure there are no leaks. Spray the sender gasket area with windex or any soapy solution to verify no bubbles/no leaks. We’ll be happy to sell you the parts for all this, see the links at the end of this post. Or if you don’t want to hassle with these details, we sell a fully assembled, sealed and tested tank, ready to install.
Check out the photos of someone previously attempted to address this issue. Notice the caulking applied around the entire fuel tank perimeter (above). This builder figured that they could seal the union between the tank and the trunk floor whereby the fuel that leaked out of the top of the tank would remain trapped between the tank and trunk.
It’s a lot easier to just fix it right (which we did).
