Today’s Goals:
Today I had many goals after yesterday’s amazingly productive day. We didn’t have 9 hours to spend on Journey but did have about 6 hours to give her. So, today I had hoped to drain her 36 gallon fuel tank of whatever fuel was left in her, then after researching and with hubby’s amazing help drop the fuel tank. I wanted to see if I needed to eventually purchase a new fuel tank as I knew it had been dented in an accident at some point but we wanted to see if the dent would be a problem or could even be fixed.
Total Work Time: 6 hours
Side note….my husband is BRILLIANT!!!! 🙂 So blessed to have him as my mentor!
Then after doing that, hubby mentioned he wanted me to remove the large cap off the rear differential after draining the oil from it so we could see what its status was and whether we needed any replacement parts for it.
So, we had a lot of goals….check out below if we accomplished them all or not! 🙂
The large fuel tank was held up by two very large metal straps. This tank was soo much larger than I expected! The second picture is of the inline tube that goes from where we put the gas nozzle at the gas pump and meets the fuel tank underneath. All the hoses involved in this process will be cut out and replaced as they are in bad shape as you can see in the second set of pictures.
We drained the fuel tank which was interesting as we filled 20 gallons of gas in our 4 gas cans we had waiting as we drained the tank! Thank goodness as we didn’t realize there was so much fuel still in it!
After we got the tank about as empty as we could by siphoning it out, we slid a jack with piece of wood separating the jack and the tank and undid the bolts and straps holding the tank to the undercarriage now that it was supported.
Then we slowly lowered the tank down to the ground….it was free and HUGE!!! We then had to remove the cap from where the tank was attached to all the sensors and such. Thankfully that was the easiest part of the whole day! 🙂
And here is the beast! We have decided to replace all the hoses dealing with fuel underneath Journey but we are going to see about keeping the fuel tank. This week I will do exactly what I did to the drive shaft…get the rust off with a wire wheel, sand it, wash it and if all looks good, then I will prime it and paint it!!! 🙂
Phase 2 of the day was with the fuel tank removed, then to check out the rear differential. Hubby instructed me to remove the bolt you see and see how much oil is inside before undoing all the bolts to remove the cover piece. As you can see there was oil inside when I removed the bolt.
So the plan was to remove all but the 2 bolts at the 8pm and 4pm position to then use a screwdriver to provide a gap to slowly let the fluid leak out rather than gush out if I had removed the cover all at once. See….my husband is brilliant! 🙂
There the fluid goes! Once it was empty I was clear to remove the last 2 bolts to remove the cover and this was what was inside. Hubby gave it the thumbs up so looks like we don’t need to buy any replacement parts for this area except a replacement gasket as this was leaking before we opened it up.
Score! We completed all our goals this weekend. I couldn’t do any of this without my amazing husband…he is soo patient and such a great teacher! Thanks hubby!
I have a list of things now to do on my own this week so excited for the holiday break and time off from school to work on it all. 🙂
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Merry Christmas fellow adventurers and vanner family!!!
— Owl
Wandering with Owl 