Gas Funnel: A Gadget for Funneling Leaded Gas into an Auto Designed for Unleaded Gas
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| Gas Funnel: A Gadget for Funneling Leaded Gas into an Auto Designed for Unleaded Gas |
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| Gas Funnel: A Gadget for Funneling Leaded Gas into an Auto Designed for Unleaded Gas |
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| Gas Funnel: A Gadget for Funneling Leaded Gas into an Auto Designed for Unleaded Gas |
 |
| Gas Funnel: A Gadget for Funneling Leaded Gas into an Auto Designed for Unleaded Gas |
 |
| Gas Funnel: A Gadget for Funneling Leaded Gas into an Auto Designed for Unleaded Gas |
 |
| Gas Funnel: A Gadget for Funneling Leaded Gas into an Auto Designed for Unleaded Gas |
Note:
In
1988, my better half and I bought a 1989 Volkswagen Jetta through a program
that sold cars to Americans traveling overseas long term. The concept was
simple: purchase a car from a U.S. dealer and pick it up at the factory, in
this case the VW factory in Bad Soden, Germany. The purchase price included
prepping the car for European use and then, a year later, for U.S standards and
shipping the car to the dealership in the U.S.
Because our temporary home was in Skopje, Yugoslavia
(Now North Macedonia), the dealership had to temporarily remove our catalytic
converter so that we could use leaded gas (I know, I know, bad for air quality,
but it is what it is). However, our car was designed ONLY to accept unleaded
gas, so the good folks at the factory gave us this funnel to bypass the
so-called safety feature (you don’t want to use leaded gas with a catalytic
converter; it does nasty things to it).
A simple device, it was tricky to use, and if you didn’t
position it just right or if you pumped too fast, you would get gas all over
the place. We learned this through hard experience. If we used pumps where a
gas jockey pumped for you, we had to “train” each individual how to use the
device; despite the language barrier, most took it with good humor.
One guy, however, took umbrage at our showing him how
to do HIS job: “I am the technician,” said he, as he shot gasoline
all over his feet.
These days “I am the technician” is our
go-to phrase when we are attempting technical jobs for which we are horribly
ill-suited, which is to say most of them.
This simple little gadget represents a special time in
our lives when we were still relatively young and willing to take risks by
traveling all over Europe, including some very scary places like East Germany
and Romania.
And Greece, which is a very, very scary place to drive a car (wonderful people, though, just not behind the wheel).
.93
ounce
26.3
grams
131.5
carats
VW Factory
Bad Soden
Germany (Then West Germany)
September 1988
2025-18-Special
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| Gas Funnel: A Gadget for Funneling Leaded Gas into an Auto Designed for Unleaded Gas |
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