I rebuilt the bulb on my 26. Got curious to see if it needed to be a little tighter so cranked down on the packing nut. You guessed it, now the packing is pressing on the valve barrel so hard, it wont turn, even though I used fuel proof grease. Rats. Did I mention it is installed in the tank with gas behind it?
Install a shutoff at the carb.
Siphon the gas out of the tank
Back off the packing nut and slip a flat screwdriver between the back side of the valve lever and the flat face of the packing nut. Rap the tip of the handle of the screwdriver smartly with a light hammer and the valve should pop loose from the taper in the body. Imagine a tiny wheel-puller.
John is right. First, siphon the gas out of the tank—and cap the tank.
Your working environment will be a lot safer that way, and even if you do make any more mistakes, you will have increased, by far, the probability that they will only be little ones.
I guess The gas is going to have to come out and so is the bulb.
Dan, I think it is just to jammed tight to do your trick without damaging something. I probably will give it a try though.
Royce, I know that would work, but I'm trying to stay stock when possible. It worked great until I over tightened it. Live and learn.
Royce:
Which one of your T's has the gas shut-off pictured ?
I guess my post did not get on the forum. What Dan Haynes said was what I posted, but he added the part about the screwdriver. I also think it would be good to syphon out the gas first just in case something breaks loose and the gas starts flowing. I would also add that you do this work outside just in case it might leak onto the floor and a spark could ignite it, you won't burn down the garage. So I will put things in this order for safety purposes:
1. Move the car outside.
2. Syphon out as much gas as you can.
3. Try backing out the packing nut and pry with the screwdriver.
Norm
Once you have the gas out, remove the shutoff from the car. Add a pipe coupling and reducer to 1/8 pipe female. Install a Zerk fitting and use your grease gun to push the packing and valve stem out.
Tried the pry with screw drivers with no action. Am learning how to stop before breaking things in my old age. Guess removal is the way. Good call on doing it outdoors in case I spill more gas than I plan on. Next day off with no rain will get this done. Can't stand having Lizzy out of action.
Now we are back in running order. I siphoned all the gas out of the tank (lucky there was only about 3.5 gal). Gas tastes not very good and a little goes a long way on the tongue.
Removed the fuel bulb and tried to pound the brass valve taper out. It was not moving and was beginning to deform. I elected not to go for the bigger hammer in this case. I had rebuilt it recently with a new and VERY tight packing washer, thus the reason it stuck so tight after turning down the packing nut.
I removed the nut and other hardware and used a dremel with a small ball burr to cut a series of holes into the packing washer, to give it some release of radial pressure. It worked and the valve now came out relatively easily. I repaired it with silver solder and re-lapped it with colgate complete, followed by some MAAS polish. The new packing fiber washer was sanded down around the edges via belt sander for a better fit.
All was re-assembled with EZ-Turn fuel proof lube and re-installed. I was ready to test things out and swung the valve to the open position only to learn I had not yet installed the drain pin. Clean up and put that back into place, try again. Success. It was after dark but I took a 25 min drive just because. Lessons learned.
That's my 15 touring Bob.
Glad you got it fixed Erich!
Good!
Norm