On Mar 7, 2008, at 4:26 PM, Scott Daniel - Shazam wrote:

>
>
> Possibly some people don't recall that older vw's traditionally had
> a real
> reserve on them.  On a Bug, a lever you twisted to access a lower
> point in
> the fuel tank, on split window Buses, a cable knob to pull that did
> the same
> thing.
>
> Discontinued in the 68 Bay Bus I believe.

I think it was in the early 60's, possibly even 1960.

Mr. BZ-wish they still had them
>
> So that wide red portion of the fuel gauge- that's 'reserve.' In the
> traditional 'german-mind' VW sense.
>
>
>
> I have found that 2WD vanagons have even 2 gallons left in them at the
> bottom of that band, like when pumping fuel out of a tank to empty
> it. .
>
> On a syncro or two, I've had them run out of fuel well before the
> bottom of
> the reserve band.
>
> I've also observed that in a 2WD vanagon, when it gets way down
> there, the
> needle moves up and down very slowly, like will read 'panic nothing
> low' and
> then five minutes later the needle will have moved up some.
>
> Never good to suck the last remains of gas and junk out of an old
> fuel tank
> of course, as in driving it that way, you can get junk in the rest
> of your
> fuel system doing that.
>
> Scott
>
> www.turboans.com <http://www.turboans.com/>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On
> Behalf Of
> Allan Streib
> Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 12:21 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Re: fuel tank capacity?
>
>
>
> On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 12:08:51 -0800, "Mike Elliott"
>
> <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM> said:
>
>> In the case of analog-toilet-bowl-float-connected-to-a-rheostat type
>
>> fuel gauges, what does the word "reserve" mean? Surely folks aren't
>
>> expected to think that once the pointer reaches "E" they still
>> have 0.9
>
>> gallons left. I'm pretty distrustful of any readings close to "E".
>
>
>
> I was just referring to the shaded area at the bottom of the gauge.  I
>
> know it's not really a "reserve".
>
>
>
> Allan
>
> --
>
> 1991 Vanagon GL
>
>
>
>
>
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