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How to make a new spring for fuel door
If you have lost the spring for your fuel door you have two options... go to mitsu and purchase a whole new gas door assembly, or make your own spring setup. Here is what I did.
Ingredients:
1. One standard clothes pin that has the spring inbetween two peices of wood or plastic. Preferably one of the smaller ones.
2. One Machine screw that can fit through the hole on the gas door where the spring used to go.
3. Two washers to go on the bolt.
4. One lock nut that threads onto the bolt.
5. Pliers (preferably needle nose)
Ok, directions.
1. First, get a friend to open your gas door while you pull on the lever.
2. Take the pliers and bend the metal part that has the hole in it that is attach to the gas door. You want to bend it slightly to the left so that you can fit a nut and a washer up behind it.
3. Break apart that clothes pin and take out the spring. You want to bend one side of it so that it can wrap around the bolt that you are putting in. I bent one of the ends that used to wrap around the wooden part of the clothes pin into a hook sort of shape.
4. Put a washer on the bolt, put the spring on the bolt, and then put the bolt in the hole. On the other side of the hole put the washer on and then the nut. Tigheten it down. Basically you want it to be in this order, from right to left.
Bolt Head -> Washer -> bent spring end -> hole in metal part of gas door -> washer -> nut.
5. Close the door carefully to check for clearance issues. You may have to bend that metal part back to the right a little bit.
Extra step: you might also want to put something soft around the end of the spring that is touching the inside of the gas door so that the metal doesnt make scratches in the paint and cause rust. I used a tiny cap off of a dishwasher tray.
Pics are posted btw, but apprently this is a really cheap part at Satan... then again, part of owning a DSM is making all sorts of crap for the car :D
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--Patrick T
Last edited by JiveMasterT; 07-05-2005 at 10:54 PM.
Reason: Uploading pictures
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