Smelly Situation

Last night I began draining the fuel tank to prepare for my Dad and I to drop the tank and replace all of the 40+ year old vent hoses (many of which I know are rotten).  The should hopefully reduce the smell of gas in the car as well as when the car is parked in the garage.
The interesting thing is that Datsun (Nissan) decided to use every size of hose for the venting system.  Should be fun, I hope to get pictures up as the project progresses.

Gas tank with new hoses being hooked up

Old hoses starting to fall appart

My Dad & helper

Undercarriage where the tank will be remounted

27-Aug-2012 update:  I put 3 gallons of gas into the car and it started right up without any leaks. I now need to fill it up completely to test the rest of the vent hoses for leaks.

Here are some great pictures for reference that I've run across on the web:

Ohh ohhhh!

While changing the differential fluid I noticed a leak in the fuel return line. Time to start replacing the hoses

Oil Pan gasket replacement

In an effort to make the Z more road-worthy, I'm going to attack the source of the leaks underneath the car. Over the weekend I started with the oil pan gasket.  Many say that you cannot do this without pulling the engine out of the car, but it is possible with quite a bit of wiggling & shifting of the pan.

 

Once off the car I started cleaning off the remains of the old gasket.  40 years of gunk & grime took quite a while to clean up, but in the end it was worth it.  

I also came up with a trick to raise the cleaned pan and the new gasket all at the same time without it slipping around. I  simply put about 8 drywall anchors (the blue ones) through the holes in the pan and through the holes in the gasket.  After getting it in position & raising it up, the anchors popped out as I began putting the 25+ bolts back in.

Old gasket & gunk on the oil pan

More remnants of the gasket