The New Hotness

MTD used the same design for the gasoline tank caps on our leaf shredder and snow thrower: an aluminum cone (which evidently serves to keep splashes away from the tank vent) mounted on a heat-staked plastic rod molded into the cap. It’s straightforward, but a bit suboptimal for high-vibration yard gadgets.

The aluminum cone eventually worries its way through the plastic post and falls into the tank, taking the heat-formed button from the post along with it. Trust me on this, fishing those things out of the tank is an exquisite little inconvenience.

The fix is straightforward.

Chop off the remains of the post, drill a snug 4-40 tapping hole straight through the cap, and tap it accordingly. Secure the cone to the screw with a nut tightened against the head, run the screw through the cap, run a pair of nuts onto it, trim to length, then jam the nuts together so the cone is about where it started out. Loctite on the nuts is a Good Thing, but I don’t know how it feels about gasoline immersion.

The snowblower cone is getting wobbly; I must make a preemptive strike on it to avoid fishing the debris out of the tank.