Joe -- I have an '86 tank in my '81 Westy.  It went in with absolutely
no glitches, everything bolts into place perfectly.  You have to replace
your fill pipe with the one from the later model, it has the same screw
holes, etc.

My only problem, which I cannot begin to figure out, is that now I
tend to get a lot of overflows while filling the tank.  Where as the
old tank seemed to work well with gas pumps, and trigger their shutoffs
early enough, this one usually runs some gas down the side of the van.
A bit annoying.  On the plus side, the tank is bigger!  I put 14.25
gallons in the other day.

I used the '86 sender, it works fine with the '81 gauge, I now have
about twice as much gas left in the red as I used to.  In fact I can
go to below the red, whereas I've been known to run out of gas while
still firmly in the red with the '81 tank.

Hope that's enough detail for you.  Be sure to replace all the hoses
while you're down there, mine were all rotten.

        Gary

On Tue, 28 Jul 1998, Joe Hunt wrote:
> Heres my problem..............
>
> I have an 81 Vanagon with a leaking gas tank.......... so I go to my local
> library and I check out the interchange autoparts book and it says thet only
> 1980-81 gas tanks are interchangables?
>
> So my question has any one else with a leaking tank replaced it with one off a
> 1983,85,85 etc. vanagon with success? my fear is finding a good servicable
> 80-81 tank will be rather difficult! Not to mention all the junk yards in my
> area trash the gas tanks!!!
>
> Any body no where i can finda reasonable priced servicable tank
>
> Leaking in NE(only when full)
>
> joe hunt
> 81 vanagon
>

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Shea                                       shea@xmission.com
Salt Lake City                      http://www.xmission.com/~shea