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I've never been a garage saler. The goodwill gene, the food-shopping gene, the rummage-saling, garage-saling and bartering genes have never expressed themselves in my personality. However, the experience of maintaining a vintage car brings out the bargain-hunter even in me. Not that I need to find where the best deal is, but whether or not the part is available at all in its original form. Sometimes the original isn't available, and so you have to choose between refurbishing an old part or trying to find the closest after-market equivalent.
If you look at my other gas tank posts, You'll see me trying to figure out why and how my 1972 Superbeetle's fuel inlet screen is different than that of, well, basically all the other Beetles. You can get the replacement for the other style, but not mine, that I've ever seen.
Well, I managed to score bit on a set of classified ads on TheSamba the other day. The story follows:
Here's the screen that came out of the tank:
It has a sort of collar at the mouth. And since once it goes into the tank, the point is at the tank outlet, it has a plastic frame that allows you to easily remove it. The problem with this one is that It's almost torn through near the point of the screen.
So. I saw an advertisement for four things that looked like fuel tank screens, but they didn't look like the normal ones you get. So I was interested from that description. The ad was selling screens that look like this:
The plastic frame isn't there, so it's not original (assuming that the one in my tank was original). The screens look basically new. There's sort of a metal collar, but there's also a piece there further restricting the diameter.
So, I took the gamble, and bought the four screens, two tank plugs that look like mine, and a new-ish filler neck vent that also looks like mine. When I opened the package, first I wanted to try to remove the restriction in the entrance. Well, I didn't manage to get it out without breaking it (it's made of very soft cork), but here's the one that I was working on next to the original:
As you can see on the right with the cork partially removed, the collar on the screens I bought is the same as the original on the left. Score!
In fact, the weird collar on the inlet pipe inside the tank (shown highlighted here:)
is probably a fossilized version of those cork collars.
And the rest of the haul:
The two plugs I bought and the original from the tank:
Old filler tube vent and new:
and two of the new screens:
You just never know what you're going to find.