Step one. Bought the van.
Hello Everybody, First post. I camp a lot in tents but after spending three days straight in a tent in the rain at Dolly Sods I swore I'd make a change. Here it is. Bought it Wednesday. Dro...
Forum Discussion
Ummmmmm. Homemade "space" pizza. It's outta this world.
I'm not making this up. I went to the store yesterday to buy the ingredients for a pizza to try out my new Enterprise cutter. The last name of the cashier who checked me out was "Kirk".
Fuel tank installation continued:
I'm going to install the fuel tank onto the van. I did this earlier in the month when it was just cold and dark (no snow yet).
First off, what could have been a big mistake. Here is a picture from back in September when I was constructing a mounting point for one of the tank brackets. It's made to straddle that underfloor ridge. I plum forgot all about that ridge when I was preping the fuel tank. I'll come back to it.
Getting the tank onto the van was a bear. I could have used another set of hands. Because of the difficulty there aren't as many pictures as usual. The mounting difficulty was with the metal straps that wrap around the tank.
They are like big springs that fit very snug around the tank. Along with the difficulty in trying to hold them closed so you can get a bolt screwed through the end is that there isn't much room to work between the side of the van and the tank.
My solution was to use a jack stand to raise the holding strap up against the bottom of the tank. This gave me enough slack to get the bolt through the holes and a nut started. In this picture you can see I have the tank attached and the jack stand I used is just visible at the bottom.
At the same time as I was getting the straps bolted together I also had to make sure the rubber fuel inlet hose was getting properly seated on the tank inlet. Wanted the hose to go all the way down the tank inlet until it was against the fuel tank. Notice two things in this picture. You can see a metal ring around the hose where it meets the tank. That is the screw clamp I'll use to tighten the hose onto the fuel tank inlet. At the top right of the picture you can just see the 90 degree fitting and the flex conduit I installed earlier.
I actually remembered to put the screw clamp on the hose before installing the tank. Finding that I'd installed the tank without the clamp is the kind of bonehead mistake I usually make.
There wasn't enough room between the tank and van to get my hand up in there to tighten the screw clamp. I used a long ratcheting screwdriver that has the six sided interchangeable bits. By added an extension with a flat bit to the screwdriver I was able to reach the screw clamp from beyond the end of the fuel tank. Keeping the end of a screwdriver that long steady enough to tighten the screw clamp took a ton of patience.
Tightening the bolts on the holding straps caused the tank to raise closer to the bottom of the van. So at the same time I was checking the rubber hose on the fuel inlet I was also checking the top of the tank, I couldn't see anything up there so I was working by touch. That's when I realized my mistake in not account for the underfloor ridge. In this picture you can see that the blue vacuum vent will miss the ridge but looking through the hole in the square tubing below the vent you can just see the arc of the copper fuel line. It will pass directly under the ridge. The tank hasn't been leveled out yet
I was able to reach up and make a couple corrective bends to the copper tubing so that it would clear the bottom of the ridge as I raised the tank. I later checked the plastic fuel line and it wasn't constricted by the bending. Here is how it looked with the tank fully raised.
I lucked out with the ridge. Of course if it had been in the way I could have made adjustments but that would have meant dropping the tank.
That finished that night's work.
I want to protect the plastic fuel line. I'll be using split loom conduit.
Split loom conduit or tubing is a corrugated plastic tube the has a slit down it's entire length. It's used for organizing and protecting electrical wiring. The slit on the side allows wires to enter or exit the conduit at places other than the ends. It also helps with the insertion of wires since you don't have to shove or pull them through the length of the conduit.
The fuel line isn't wiring but the split loom will give it a protective cover.
Found the easiest way to get the fuel line into the split loom was to bend the loom 90 degrees and press the fuel line against the bend. The fuel line would slip into the loom. Then just worked my way down the loom until I ran out of fuel line. Cut the loom at the point.
The Webasto heater will sit on the passenger side of the van so I need to get the loom covered fuel line across the underside of the van. I used the same "cable tray" that I ran the liquid tight conduit through.
Since the loom isn't stiff I couldn't feed it straight across the underside of the van. This picture is the view looking up between the gas tank and the exhaust shield. I kept shoving the loom through from the driver's side until it could see it in this gap.
Pull all the loom through that gap.
Listen to Tiger tell me how he would have done a better job of it.
Push the split loom up and over the exhaust shield to the passenger side of the van.
That brings the fuel tank installation up to date. When I install a bracket to raise the liquid tight conduit off the exhaust shield I'll do the same for the fuel line inside the split loom. The next step will be to install the Webasto heater. With the current cold, wind and snow that's not going to happen right away. At the moment the weather forecast has Saturday in the 50's. We'll see.
I've got a couple more projects on the van to write about so I'll start covering one of them in my next posting.
I'm not making this up. I went to the store yesterday to buy the ingredients for a pizza to try out my new Enterprise cutter. The last name of the cashier who checked me out was "Kirk".
Fuel tank installation continued:
I'm going to install the fuel tank onto the van. I did this earlier in the month when it was just cold and dark (no snow yet).
First off, what could have been a big mistake. Here is a picture from back in September when I was constructing a mounting point for one of the tank brackets. It's made to straddle that underfloor ridge. I plum forgot all about that ridge when I was preping the fuel tank. I'll come back to it.
Getting the tank onto the van was a bear. I could have used another set of hands. Because of the difficulty there aren't as many pictures as usual. The mounting difficulty was with the metal straps that wrap around the tank.
They are like big springs that fit very snug around the tank. Along with the difficulty in trying to hold them closed so you can get a bolt screwed through the end is that there isn't much room to work between the side of the van and the tank.
My solution was to use a jack stand to raise the holding strap up against the bottom of the tank. This gave me enough slack to get the bolt through the holes and a nut started. In this picture you can see I have the tank attached and the jack stand I used is just visible at the bottom.
At the same time as I was getting the straps bolted together I also had to make sure the rubber fuel inlet hose was getting properly seated on the tank inlet. Wanted the hose to go all the way down the tank inlet until it was against the fuel tank. Notice two things in this picture. You can see a metal ring around the hose where it meets the tank. That is the screw clamp I'll use to tighten the hose onto the fuel tank inlet. At the top right of the picture you can just see the 90 degree fitting and the flex conduit I installed earlier.
I actually remembered to put the screw clamp on the hose before installing the tank. Finding that I'd installed the tank without the clamp is the kind of bonehead mistake I usually make.
There wasn't enough room between the tank and van to get my hand up in there to tighten the screw clamp. I used a long ratcheting screwdriver that has the six sided interchangeable bits. By added an extension with a flat bit to the screwdriver I was able to reach the screw clamp from beyond the end of the fuel tank. Keeping the end of a screwdriver that long steady enough to tighten the screw clamp took a ton of patience.
Tightening the bolts on the holding straps caused the tank to raise closer to the bottom of the van. So at the same time I was checking the rubber hose on the fuel inlet I was also checking the top of the tank, I couldn't see anything up there so I was working by touch. That's when I realized my mistake in not account for the underfloor ridge. In this picture you can see that the blue vacuum vent will miss the ridge but looking through the hole in the square tubing below the vent you can just see the arc of the copper fuel line. It will pass directly under the ridge. The tank hasn't been leveled out yet
I was able to reach up and make a couple corrective bends to the copper tubing so that it would clear the bottom of the ridge as I raised the tank. I later checked the plastic fuel line and it wasn't constricted by the bending. Here is how it looked with the tank fully raised.
I lucked out with the ridge. Of course if it had been in the way I could have made adjustments but that would have meant dropping the tank.
That finished that night's work.
I want to protect the plastic fuel line. I'll be using split loom conduit.
Split loom conduit or tubing is a corrugated plastic tube the has a slit down it's entire length. It's used for organizing and protecting electrical wiring. The slit on the side allows wires to enter or exit the conduit at places other than the ends. It also helps with the insertion of wires since you don't have to shove or pull them through the length of the conduit.
The fuel line isn't wiring but the split loom will give it a protective cover.
Found the easiest way to get the fuel line into the split loom was to bend the loom 90 degrees and press the fuel line against the bend. The fuel line would slip into the loom. Then just worked my way down the loom until I ran out of fuel line. Cut the loom at the point.
The Webasto heater will sit on the passenger side of the van so I need to get the loom covered fuel line across the underside of the van. I used the same "cable tray" that I ran the liquid tight conduit through.
Since the loom isn't stiff I couldn't feed it straight across the underside of the van. This picture is the view looking up between the gas tank and the exhaust shield. I kept shoving the loom through from the driver's side until it could see it in this gap.
Pull all the loom through that gap.
Listen to Tiger tell me how he would have done a better job of it.
Push the split loom up and over the exhaust shield to the passenger side of the van.
That brings the fuel tank installation up to date. When I install a bracket to raise the liquid tight conduit off the exhaust shield I'll do the same for the fuel line inside the split loom. The next step will be to install the Webasto heater. With the current cold, wind and snow that's not going to happen right away. At the moment the weather forecast has Saturday in the 50's. We'll see.
I've got a couple more projects on the van to write about so I'll start covering one of them in my next posting.
