Wedgie Gas

Post by **littlepixel** » 23 Feb 2007, 14:23

Hi there - About to actually start using our lovely 1982 Aircooled westy (Heidi) and being a total noob and all wondered if anyone has some good advice on filling the built in gas tank so we can cook pancakes over the weekend. Living in North london we need the name of a place where we can fill it and also whether we'll need to source our own hose type doobrie as I've heard a whisper that european connectors and uk ones aren't the same.

Secondly - the water tank hasn't been used in a loooong time. It's empty but we wondered about disinfecting/sterilising it somehow so it's nice and pristine. My mind is going in the Boot Chemists Brewing Kit sterilisation tablets direction, but I wondered if there are some time honoured ways any of you guys do this sort of thing.

Thanks in advance for any help/advice/wisdom...
Huw

Post by **Mocki** » 23 Feb 2007, 15:31

hi, maybe thiswill be of some help.........
and as for water tank cleansing, you need "puriclean" from any caravan shop.....

Post by **Westy.Club.Joker** » 23 Feb 2007, 17:10

Gas adapter fittings available form Gasure, also on Ebay if you know which ones to buy. Most people buy TWO of the UK type bayonet connectors, screw them together inline and then screw the lot into the centre of the Westy fitting (the one with the big screw cap on it), the extra length gives you enough room to get the filler bayonet on.

You can then fill up at fuel stations with Autogas (you pay the road duty though) or if you can find another source for non-road use, it`s very cheap

Few and far between though

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Autogas-LPG-Flush ... dZViewItem

TWO of these will do the job.

Post by **littlepixel** » 23 Feb 2007, 20:13

Thanks for the help people. I trust your hack with doubling up two screw/bayonette fittings though am scratching my head slightly at how it works - I 'get' the idea of it being double length - but can't see from the pix on the listing how the male thread would screw into the square hole of the second fitting. Probably being an idiot - if they were in my hands right now I'd probably have a far better idea of the notion. Should I just make the punt on ebay right now?

Post by **Westy.Club.Joker** » 23 Feb 2007, 23:32

No square hole involved. Trust me, buy two and all will become obvious. If you have the standard Westy tank, with the filling point towards the back wheel end of the tank, it will work fine. Don`t get the Acme female thread type adapter coupling (which is actually the correct way to do it) because half the time they won`t seal to the Acme male thread on your tank.

Get the TWO bayonet types, screw one into the other, then screw into the central female threaded hole in your tank filler point. Fill up, then remove the adapters and store in your `van.

Post by **littlepixel** » 25 Feb 2007, 16:48

Westy.Club.Joker wrote:No square hole involved. Trust me, buy two and all will become obvious.

Have duly been ordered; Good to have the UK translation of the Westy handbook. Ours did come with the original but our Deutsche is not exactly brilliant. Was sincerely amazed when I managed to actually get her registered.

I have another question born out of an embarrasing moment today when we took her out to stretch her legs and see friends. Namely on doing the demo of her charms in their driveway we couldn't pop the top. The latch clip thing inside is EVERso stiff and we've had slight problems before but we really really couldn't get it open and wondered if there's some special technique involved?

I have a notion of taking it apart a bit if we ever do get it open and then hitting the spring a few times with a rubber mallet or similar as it seems the main problem is not that it's seized - more that it's just so blimmin' strong.

Is this a common westy pop top problem? Anyone have any hacks/hints?
Ta!

Post by **littlepixel** » 17 Mar 2007, 22:03

Ok so now here's the problem; Adapters arrived fine; Fit the van fine, so went to local BP just off North Circular to fill 'er up and ran into the next slight problem: When you twist the bayonet fitting of the fuel pump's nozzle to fix it on, it twists the adapter loose so when you try and fill it just scooches out of the now loose seal and nothing goes into the tank. I made several attempts at this and it wasn't me being a klutz - it really did seem nigh-on impossible to get the nozzle onto the van without loosening them. Not really so easy when the filling cap is so low down either. So in the end we left with no gas and a bit of a grey cloud over our heads.

Is this something that happens to other LPG people? The adapters were in as tight as I could reasonably manage - should I be thinking along the lines of some sort of nylon thread-lock tape to make sure it doesn't twist out of the tank's threaded apeture when I try to fit the nozzle on? Or is there perhaps a different design of filler nozzle at filling stations other than BP that don't twist the same way as the adaptor so it's actually tightening it rather than loosening when you attached the filler hose?

Any help appreciated. We'll get there in the end I'm sure..