The Bus reserve tap knob was discontinued, as was the Bug's, in 1961
with the addition of the fuel gauge in the bug and bus. Ironically,
the Karman Ghia had a BOTH a reserve tap and fuel gauge until the
1961 model year.

Ric

At 06:26 PM 3/7/2008, 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.
>
>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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>
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>