www.MSruns.com read only forum (Jan.15,2018)

After the last part of the week was stolen from me for work and the weekend and Monday fell to a stomach virus, I was definitely ready to cut some metal.

I pulled the fuel tank off the frame and drained it. I'm wondering why I completely filled it way back when. Now I have a really full 5 gallon can full of iffy gas. That's a lot of mowing.

I first pulled the filler neck off. I found, not entirely to my surprise, that it was held by four sheetmetal screws and "sealed" with what appears to be Bondo.

With the filler neck off, I could photograph inside the tank. It's not a happy sight. The outside of the bottom is somewhat pitted as well. Since it's only about 16ga steel, there's not a lot of material to corrode away. The entire bottom, if not the whole tank, should be replaced.

While I am formulating plan B to replace the bottom plate (or the whole tank), I will continue with plan A.

I marked and cut the hole for the pump and test fit it. I also cut a trial gasket.

Drat.

Boost Engineering has essentially backordered the trigger wheel, citing a manufacturing problem that should be corrected shortly, hopefully by mid April. Since I don't want to further delay running the engine, I will get it running with the 009 distributor and convert to EDIS later, though hopefully not much later!

In looking for something unrelated, I found a cache of missing parts, namely the bag-o-relays and relay sockets.

Once I get the fuel tank in order, I should be mere hours from trying to start the engine.

I tacked, welded and dressed a reinforcement ring for the fuel pump. I think I really should have used a thicker piece, but since I'll probably have to replace the whole bottom of tank anyway, we'll see if this will work.

Using friction from the gasket to hold the bolts, it was a pretty simple matter to bolt it in place.

Of course, now that I think about it, it's going to leak like a sieve unless I seal around the bolt heads. Even then, it will leak around the bolts between the tank and the reinforcing ring because the ring is only welded on the outside edge. Besides, there are probably pinholes in that weld.

Soooo... I guess I wasted an evening. Except that I just needed to do something with my hands.

I think I will need to get a 3 inch holesaw and a piece of 1/8" or 3/16" plate slightly smaller than the bottom of the tank. Cut the hole, drill for the fuel pump bolts, braze them from the inside for studs, secure the plate physically to the tank with a few bolts and braze around outside edge to seal it.

Somewhere in there, I need clean all the rust chips out of the tank out, too.

I cut out the old bottom of fuel tank and made a new one.

The new bottom has reinforcement inside the bottom of the tank. I made it from two strips of 2" x 1/8" mild steel. Each side has half the opening cut from it and is firmly stitch welded to 16ga sheet metal bottom. I welded the seam between the two places with them in place so that there would be a little extra penetration into the bottom. The welds were not pretty, but they appear to be solid. I think I had the wire speed slightly too slow, making it sputter a bit

I drilled and placed the bolts and welded the heads to the reinforcement plate then flowed solder around the bolts to seal them.

Remaining to be done is cleaning the inside of the tank of mostly light surface rust and installing the new bottom. I have not yet decided whether I will try to attach it from the inside of the tank, which will be stronger and arguably easier to seal, or the outside, which will probably be easier overall to do.

Man, I'm getting tired of running out of oxygen with my little Bernzomatic torch pretty much any time I start a project. I have a real torch and a couple of rusty old bottles. I need to see if I can get them filled and get/build a cart for the cylinders. Until then....

The fill spout on the tank is currently an aluminum flange that was "sealed" with PC7 or Bondo or some such applied inappropriately and secured with 4 sheet metal screws, which obviously leaked. While I want to someday replace it with a nice remote filler, for now I just want to fix this one. To that end, while the bottom was still open, I drilled out the sheet metal screw holes and brazed four 5mm bolts from the inside, providing both a strong method of attaching the spout and a reliable seal. I will need to clean off the sealing surface of the spout, drill out the mounting holes and cut a gasket for it.

Once I was done with the spout bolts, I cleaned the interior surfaces of the tank with WD40 and steel wool and wiped it out. It looks much better and hopefully the layer of WD40 will minimize the formation of new surface rust before I fill it up.

I wanted to put the bottom in from inside so that the remaining rim from the cut out bottom will serve as a strong bond so that the brazed seam will not be under a lot of mechanical stress. I trimmed the bottom for a snug fit. Starting with the end closest to the fuel pump opening, I used a deep C-clamp to secure the corner and tacked it in with a small bead of bronze.

As eluded to earlier, I ran out of oxygen after getting about 6 inches of either side of the first corner. I tried to use the MAPP with the air torch to continue, but it just doesn't get it hot enough, at least not something this big.

I still wanted to continue for a while, so I decided to tack weld the rest of the bottom. With clever application of the C-clamp, Vice-Grips and a pipe inserted through the filler hole, I was able to tack all the way around the rest of the bottom. If I was better at welding, I would prefer to weld around the whole thing, but historically, I have had trouble getting a seal with my welding In any case, it will be ready for brazing when I get more oxygen tomorrow.

The tank is finished!

I stopped at the hardware store and bought both oxygen cylinders they had. Ran them both out, too, though when the second ran out I was only reflowing some of the brazed joints for appearance's sake.

It's not my most beautiful brazing job, but I'm confident it won't leak. Between the cylinders running out and me pausing to fetch fresh rods, etc, the bronze flowed a little wild in places, but it's functional and will be covered in paint, anyway

I had to drill out the fuel pump mounting holes to account for slightly misaligned mounting bolts, but it didn't take much to mount the pump. I even verified that it spins!

I wire brushed the filler spout, drilled out the mounting holes, cut a gasket and bolted it in place. In pressurizing the tank with a little air, the only leak I can detect is around the filler spout. It is cast from aluminum the sealing surface isn't really flat. I worked it over with a file and it's much better, but still leaks a little air. I will apply a little gasket sealant and that should take care of that.

I put a valve and a very short hose on the old fuel tank outlet and will use it as a drain.

All that's left is to sand, paint and install it.

Or, will be soon...

Friday, I went to The Bug Stop and picked up a couple of things, most importantly an exhaust system. It's an EMPI 3467, which is basically a 4 into 1 with a single muffler that exits to one side. There is a very slight "concern" that the included muffler may be too quiet, but that's a pretty minor concern.

The weekend was far too busy to allow any trike time, but this week may offer some opportunities.

The exhaust is installed, albeit temporarily. It looks great! It mounts low and does not obscure all those pretty purple and chrome bits on the engine. I hope, however, that the baja bumper clears it.

It's temporarily mounted because I wanted to verify fit and take a couple of pictures. I'm very pleased with how it's looking. As for the exhaust, before it is permanently installed, I need to strip to factory paint off it. The paint on it is plain ol' paint intended to keep it from rusting on the boat. It is *not* high heat paint. While it's bare, I will install the oxygen sensor bung, then repaint it with high heat paint. It's too bad there doesn't appear to be a purple high heat paint, at least none that I've found.

I also finished a few other things that were pending, like completing the installation of the alternator and putting the belt on.

While all that was going on, I set the fuel tank on a stand and put about an inch of gasoline in the bottom of it. It did not immediately appear to be leaking, but once I'd gone on and forgotten about it, I came back to see a fairly large puddle on the floor under it.

The entire bottom of the tank was wet, so I couldn't really tell where it was coming from.

I used/tested the fuel pump to empty the tank and another day, I will lightly pressurize it with air and find the leak(s) with soap bubbles. Maybe I'll be lucky and it will be around the pump, needing only a better gasket to fix. We'll see.

Although most of this update is about components that are not directly EFI related, they are still necessary for the engine to run, so I will post them here.

I opened the throttle cable package from Flanders. When I placed the order, I added a few extras and a few alternatives. I found that I had ordered the wrong size straight adjuster. It turns out ok because the configuration seems to work better without that particular type of adjuster anyway. The cable end for the throttle body is ever so slightly too large, but I'm sure I can make it work as well. Otherwise, it looks like the throttle cable should come together very well.

I also started working on the switch pod. As I learned from using the same model switch for the yellow trike, I can use the momentary 'kill' switch as a starter switch, but I need to make a modification. This switch pod is intended to help one convert an off-road bike to street legal. As supplied, the headlight switch shorts the kill leads when it is in the off position. It's a simple matter to open up the pod and snip the brown/white wires between the kill switch and the headlight switch. This isolates the kill switch as a normally open momentary switch.

I also learned that this switch cannot handle the current for the VW starter solenoid and thus needs relay isolation. I intend to also isolate the headlight and horn wiring with relays. This will result in quite a lot of wire stretching from front to back, but experience has shown that it will be worth it.

The wire on the switch pod itself is too short to reach from the bar all the way under the body, so I will need to extend it. Likewise, the speedometer wiring is too short and will need to be extended. Both will need connectors, but the standard WeatherPack connectors I've been using are a bit bulky for what will turn out to be a dozen or so wires from each device.

I received the distributor plug yesterday. It appears very well made and ready to plug into the block. When I got the tracking info from Boost Engineering, I'd hoped that the entire order was enroute, but alas, it was only the plug. I emailed them to let them know I had received the plug and to check status on the trigger wheel. It is expected to ship early next week!

Putting the oxygen sensor bung in was not too tough. I did have one problem with a burn-through, then I had to pile on more material and to clean that up, it got pretty thick. I'm pretty sure it's sealed, but it's not particularly pretty.

The sensor is placed on the left side of the collector. It is not exactly gases from all four cylinders impinge on it, but it sits directly between the pipes for cylinders 1 & 3.

I have plugged the bung with a suitable spark plug and after I get a piece of bike inner tube to cover the chrome bit of the muffler, I will deliver the system to someone who will shot peen all the paint off it. I can then paint it with a decent high heat paint like VHT Flameproof.