Charles,

  For what it is worth, you may want to drop the tank anyway.  I did it
myself in my first week of ownership, without a Bentley, and prior to
joining the list.  Only took a leisurely Sat morning to drop, clean and
inspect.  Waited a few days for the outrageously priced dealer parts. A
plastic tee fitting was broke, other was close to breaking, my grommets were
fine.  Put back up the next weekend.
  I found, as have many others, literally pounds of dirt on top of the gas
tank, even though the underside of the van was impressively clean.  Wear
safety glasses!!!  Once you see the shape of the tank, you can understand
how the dirt would be carried by eddy currents of air in to an otherwise
inaccessible area.  Only way to clean is by dropping the tank.  Since I
bought my van in Saskatchewan, (very dry) rust wasn't a problem.  I can now
understand why these tanks rust through though.

Mike Pedersen
'88 Westie GL Automatic
Powell River, BC

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles McGehee [mailto:chasm@ELLTEL.NET]
> Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 11:03 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Re: replacing gas tank crossover tubes
>
>
> Thanks, Mark.  I'll be gone for the next few weeks, but when
> I return I'm
> going to give it whirl.
>
> Charles
> '85 Westy
>
> At 01:41 AM 6/22/01 -0700, you wrote:
> >Hi Charles,
> >I did it on my '84 without TOO much grief with everything in
> place.  I did
> >remove the tires for easier access.  You basically have to
> look at the
> >position of everything and then reach in and feel your way
> at it.  I did
> >lubricate the grommets and pipe to ease it in a bit.  One thing to be
> >careful with is not to push the grommets through the holes
> into the tank.
> >They didn't seem to want to do this on me, but it might be
> prudent to get an
> >extra when at purchasing them (if you need grommets) just in
> case.  My
> >failure was that one of the small overflow lines broke free
> from the "tee"
> >and that caused the original leak.  My grommets were fine.
> >Patients, Grasshopper, will almost always overcome force :-)
> >Mark
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Charles McGehee" <chasm@ELLTEL.NET>
> >To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
> >Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 9:02 AM
> >Subject: replacing gas tank crossover tubes
> >
> >
> > > Listees,
> > >
> > > Sometime this month Vanagonite told of replacing the gas
> tank crossover
> > > tubes without dropping the tank.  I can't find it in the
> message archives,
> > > however.   Can' t remember its subject line and no key
> words seem to work.
> > >
> > > Does anyone remember this message and can you point me to it?
> > >
> > > Charles
> > > '85 Westy
> > >
>