<VV> green rant and some corvair related stuff

[Tony Underwood]

At 05:22 hours 06/13/2005, Geoffrey A Johnson wrote:
>Nice post Robert.  You sum it up really well.  Whenever someone snaps at me
>"how can youd d rive an old car or how can you say you claim to care about 
>the enviroment when you drive an old car?"   My response always is that 
>first, all cars pre-1974 account for less then 1/2 of 1 percent of 
>pollution released anymore, and second, it will take more energy to 
>produce, and put more pollution into the atmosphere to create a new car 
>then my old car will produce in all its remaining miles.


I recall seeing a similar statement in a publication somewhere, made sense.


>Then again like others have claimed, I fix anything I can.


It's wasteful and foolish NOT to repair and reuse something which CAN be 
refurbished and made to do its job again, especially if it puts money back 
into your pocket.


This morning, I took the fuel pump on the '62 ragtop apart and I replaced 
the bottom casting with one off a "dead soldier" in the shed.   The '62's 
pump had two of the "lower" screws lose their grip and no longer would 
tighten up, resulting in the pump developing a slight air leak which would 
cause fuel to siphon back out of the pump down into the tank and the pump 
would lose its prime and practically refuse to pick fuel back up again... 
the car would start and run long enough to leave the driveway before it 
"ran out of gas".    It then would require endless cranking, or it required 
priming the carbs to get the engine to start and run fast enough to prompt 
the pump to pick up fuel, whereupon all would be well until the car sat 
overnight, whereupon it might or night not siphon the fuel back out of the 
pump again and then "dry start" the following morning.   It was a random 
thing.

After I put the repaired pump back on (and it's an older pump) with the 
old/new tightly secured bottom casting, it picked fuel right up, no problem 
at all, been running fine ever since.

I repaired the existing fuel pump.   I did not arbitrarily leap to buy 
another pump.    (plenty of time to do that for other projects in the works 
that will need pumps)   Nor did I immediately dig into the shed to grab up 
a spare pump.

Support the vendors, sure...  but I'm also interested in supporting ME as 
well..



>Did not someone post here awhile back the following,
>Use it up, wear it out, if you can't do without.


It was "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without", old credo I 
live by.



tony..   never throw anything away