Okay, so I had to post a small rant. As you all may know, from my previous posts, I am dropping my fuel tank to pull out the stock T.P.I. pump so that I can run a carb setup.

These cars, '86 T/A, have to be the most horribly designed car I have
ever been in contact with. No, that is not an exageration. I would like to meet the man that designed these so that I could slap him.

First off I had to remove the cat-back, looking at the clamps and how rusted they were I was scared! Surprisingly enough, it came off fairly easy. No choice words were needed here.

Second, a heat shield of some sort for the fuel tank. Tons of little bolts, but
not too tough.

Third, a stamped steel panhard "bar" and some other thing above it need to be removed. I have yet to remove these because the panhard "bar" bolts snapped on me and the thing above it, it's bolt seems to be fused in some how. Eh...So I have to now cut the bolts out.

Fourth step will be unbolting the straps and droping the tank. I obviously haven't made it that far.

Sorry for the rant, just find it incredibly stupid that you have to go through all that crap to drop the tank. Welcome to the Third Gen world I guess.

 

What do you expect? It is a 21 year old car.. Bolts rust and break.

Hope you get the tank droipped in short order though.

 

The snapping/fused bolts aren't the problem. Just mainly ranting about how you have to practically remove the rear suspension to drop the tank. lol

I'll get some pictures of my progress and what I'm doing to modify the stock pick-up tube. I guess this should probably be in the carb section.

 

Yea, third gens are not a lot of fun to work on. I particularly like trying to get exhaust manifolds off a V8 car. I replaced the heads on my '87. I should have just yanked the engine. It would have been easier.

 

Did you happen to soak your bolts with something like PB blaster first?
Just an FYI Spohn also sells the correct replacement bolts for the ones you snapped.
http://spohn.net/product.cfm?productid=1412 $10.95

 

Oh, I see.

I havn't actually done major work on another car, so I guess I've never seen the easy way

 

There's already a sticky there about it.

 

@ 5-7

BTW, Thirdgens aren't near as hard as some others.

 

Hey bad50gt, nice rant on dropping the fuel tank - just wait 'til you put
it back in! I installed Hooker 2055 headers+y-pipe+cat+tailpipe+
flowmaster - solo style - because my shiftless lowdown "friends" just
happened to be "too busy" to help - so it goes. I tell you this -I earned
that Hooker heart patch!! That fuel tank will test your level of "spontaneous
cursing creativity" for sure but plug away at it .


" The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing...
If you can fake that,you've got it made."
Groucho Marx