[RWebb]

Since I have not seem many rants in OT lately, and since I am further dead in the water on this project, thereby freeing up some waste time...

I do hearby ordain and establish this RANT THREAD ON HOSE CLAMPS

Now, here is the background: I am trying to find a ugly fuel odor leak in my 1986 Vanagon Westy camper in order to provide a more perfect odoriferous experience for me and my posterity (as well as any assigns) which is likely necessary to insure domestic tranquility. I want to establish this connection not just for us, but to secure the blessings of a pollution free environment for all. Such simple measures should indeed promote the general welfare, and prevent any fires from fuel vapor buildup.

To that end, a governing pressure on the part of the 5 mm dia. fuel hose needs to be instituted to form a more perfect union between the hose and the nipple on which the fuel vapor emissions tank is founded.

It should be self-evident that to secure the above blessings, tight connections are instituted between hose and nipple*

I have already dissolved the mechanical bands which have connected the nipples on the tanks with another, older and worn hose. These were not reusable clamps however, and I am thus in need of a mechanism to secure the blessing of tightness to the hose and each nipple.

To secure these tights, clamps are instituted among the connections, deriving their just powers of clamping from the turning of the screw atop said clamp. I have already determined that the form and fitness of the hoses has become destructive of their ends, and it is the right of the vehicle owner to alter or to abolish these hoses, and to institute new connections, laying the foundation on such principles as the torque to be had from an inclined plane and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness by keeping the freekin' gas vapor where it belongs, in the fuel system.

Indeed, I recognize that prudence will dictate that connections long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shewn, that vehicle owners are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the gasoline vapors to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute reekiness of toxic chemicals, it is the vehicle owners right, it is their duty, to throw off such connections, and to provide new hoses and clamps for their future security.

This has been the patient sufferance of these people who want to camp in this Westy; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to have me alter their former systems of fuel vapor management. The history of the present vapor system is a history of repeated injuries and fuelsurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny of bad smells over the area anywhere near this vehicle. To prove this, let me submit some facts:

The present vapor recovery system has refused to assent to capture the vapor, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
This is a matter of immediate and pressing importance, unless the vehicle is to be suspended in its operation till repair should be obtained; and when so suspended, it still reeks.
The present vapor recovery system does not provide for the accommodation of large pools of gasoline.
Odors issue forth at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of gasoline, fatiguing the occupants.
The vapors could dissolve important parts repeatedly, or invade the lungs of the people seeking to use the vehicle.
If continued for a long time, such dissolutions, might even be capable of annihilation of the vehicle users, or even people at large, or even produce convulsions of those within the vehicle.

[yada yada]

So, at long last, I have removed the old hoses, secured new hoses, and yet I find I cannot locate clamps for said hoses anywhere in town.

It's hard just to find screw clamps that small, but the real problem is that when you do they seem designed to destroy the hose by ripping into it.

I direct everyone's attention to thread on how lousy auto parts stores have become...





* That Time magazine cover is not the subject of this post no matter how many time I use the word nipple.