John S's Journal

I haven’t done much in recent days as the daylight hours have receded and the temperatures along with it. My focus has been on getting things done around the house and yard while it is still relatively dry outside.

Yesterday seemed like a good time to take the old girl out for a spin as the chores were done and I needed a dose of MGB fun. I wasn’t sure my battery was up for the task as it’s been below freezing for a few days but it fired up after a bit of coaxing. My fuel gauge hasn’t been accurate since I got the car on the road and I have a new one to install but I need to get the level down before I take out the old one. Ideally, I’d like to get it down low enough to pull the plug and catch the contents into a drain pan for a couple of reasons. I know I can change the sender with some gas still in the tank by raising up the passenger side but I want to make sure I drain any residual impurities from the tank that may be lurking before I put the car to bed for the rain/cold season as I won’t be driving the car regularly for awhile. My plan is to put about 5 gallons of clear gas in the car once the new sender is in.

I discovered that my speedometer/odometer weren’t working on my drive yesterday which is probably due to my messing around with my gauge lights the last time I did anything with the car. How so? Well, the LED’s that I installed in the Spring quit working due to a ground issue and when I fixed that, I must have pushed the speedometer light in too far which has fouled the speedo needle. Good news/bad news kinda thing. The lights work but the speedo doesn’t. It’s a bit of a Catch-22 when you are trying to discern how much fuel you are using based on your mileage when your odometer isn’t functioning…

So now I have a couple things to attend to when the weather and the mood strikes me. I’ll start by slowly draining the fuel into a catch pan until I know it’s empty. I can only hope it’s just a few gallons…