Continuing saga. Between being called to work, minor family disasters, hordes of raging grandchildren(OK, four), and I don't know what all else this weekend, I did manage to drop my tank again.
I cleaned my tank of the "bathtub ring" of fuel deposits last year. But because of the anti-slosh baffles in the tank, I could only clean a bit over a third of it. So I knew there would be a certain amount of continuing detritus. There was, and all three filters showed it.
Also in the inner filter of the pump there was this:
Anything red is the fuel deposits/ The fuzz? For a minute I wondered if I was going to find a denuded hamster corpse floating around in the the tank. After some study my best guess is maybe the fibers from inside a cigarette filter? I saw no paper of any other evidence pointing to it once being a cigarette butt but I frankly don't know. Bonus is that this was in the inner filter. There was no fuzz on the outer filter. What is it? How did it get past the outer filter? No idea. Did a pretty good job of corking up my inner filter though.
If you look at the filter you can see part of it is pretty clean. That's the part that was folded up inside the "can". It appears that in folding it, it was pinched off and not getting fuel drawn through it. I bought the same filter again anyway. Fooling with it, I noticed that the inner "straws" that keep it from collapsing move back and forth inside it quite a bit. Not being in the correct position, that other straw was no help. With the replacement I worked the straws back toward the pump end before installing so now they and the filter should be more effective.
Anyway I was trying for a mad rush to get it done and run down to Wal Mart to fill up on $2.59 gas. Ida is striking 15 years to the day that hurricane Katrina did. And I remember after Katrina gas was up to four bucks a gallon here for a while and way too many gas station didn't even have any to sell at all. I don't know if it will be like that again but I do know come Monday morning the commodities traders will be back at playing silly buggers and I will be very surprised if our local gas prices don't start going up no matter what. Rush trip didn't work out. I finished up and ready to go straight to the pumps. Pumped about five gallons and the filler hose started leaking on the ground. Still wearing work clothes I got under to wiggle and poke. No good. I hadn't managed to get the hose square onto the tank filler neck. It's tucked into the the frame rail. The extra long screwdriver I used on that clamp I had left at home. I had no less than five screwdrivers on board. None long enough. Bailed out and went in Wal Mart. Wife wanted this and that and I needed some stuff too. Wal Mart has no Gatorade. None. Just some cans of that orange dry mix. Yuck. I bought the longest screwdriver they had and we went back out. Screwdriver wasn't long enough. But if I was able to poke and turn the clamp enough so I could potentially reach it. So I worked at that.
My life was shortened a month or two by oldest grandson coming out of nowhere, grabbing my feet, and yelling, "Whatcha under there doin Papa?" But I managed to remove the hose, loosen the clamp, reposition everything back to more like it was supposed to be AND I could kinda sorta get the clamp tightened while losing only a small amount of knuckle skin. Chased away grandson with dire threats of not paying him to cut my grass and off we went back to the pumps. Fingers crossed my fiddling was good enough. Pumps closed at 7PM. "Special temporary shorter hours" sign out that I failed to notice before. Lovely. 7:15. I still don't have enough gas to run the generator and roof AC's. DW reports 2.69 at the next gas station. Fine, ten cents a gallon, what the h### here we go. Pull into that station and there are men with trucks doing something with the in-ground tanks. The pumps are all shut off. No gas. Good grief. DW reports off-brand station a block up also shows 2.69 on whatever app she has on her phone. One more time. Single row of pumps. Yep. Have to wait and wait on bozo one to come out and pump his gas before I can get at the middle pump. Pump shuts down at $60 on my card? Great. Reboot. Another $60 worth. And a third time. Baby was empty. Refused my card to top it up. Happily DW has a separate card and it was $25 to top it up. No leaks. Just before getting back in, bozo #2 screeches around in front and backs up until the ladder on the back of his truck is almost in my windshield. And of course goes off to wander around in the station for a while. People coming and going at the pump right behind us so much I just give up and wait on ladder guy.
Off we went. I feel the coach is now up to its next trip two weeks from now. The people I had noted losing has returned. Fuel pump is now able to supply fuel as it should. Haven't had to tow my Ford yet.
Found some half gallon Gatorades at a grocery store. I work in the heat and they are my chosen hydration. Bought all they had (4).
I never remember to take pictures but I did one or two this time. This is my jack. I forgot to use a piece of 2x12" wood on top of it this time but it went OK. Fuel will always want to slosh to one end of the other so I let it slosh to the rear. Hanging down like that I just fine for me to reach over the back and get the pump in and out. With less than a quarter tank it wasn't hard to level it back out for the lift back up. It never does want to quite go back where it came from. I always have to nudge it around the frame rails a bit with a fairly large prybar. If it looks like the tank is resting on my impact, well it is. Sharp eyes may also note the line to the generator looking a bit stretched. It's not really and has plenty of slack when the tank is back up in any case.
I didn't change the pump this time, maybe next time I'll get a Walbro and see what it does. I expect to drop the tank and change the filters one more time in the future. And leave that long screwdriver in the onboard toolkit.