Found the cause of the fuel smell.....

Couldn't work out why my 69 bug had a strong fuel smell whenever I fuelled up, thought I'd spilled some on the side of the car each time or something similar. Found the cause - fuel flowing out the top of the tank at the fuel sender.

After stupidly trying to take the sender off and making fuel gush out, I syphoned fuel and dried it out, while racing off to the auto shop and buying some fuel-type gasket goo. I have applied it liberally and will let it dry a few days before adding all the fuel back into the tank.

Is there a better way of sealing such a leak? The rubber gasket looked in good nick but obviously wasn't...should I have done something else?

dont foget that the fuel tank sender needs to be grounded to the tank to read corectly at gauge I ran a seperate earth wire from under one of the 6 mounting screws to a earth point on the body that way you can seal up the sender as much as you like without worrying about a earthto the tank.

I noticed with the new sender it had new screws and one of them had a copper washer under it instead of a plastic one like the other five. The fuel guage played up until I did the screw up really tight. This makes the seperate earth wire idea sound good.