Reserve tank on a Bug

[truckersmike]

I have a '62 Bug and when I was showing a friend one time he said I was missing the lever for the reserve tank. What reserve tank I asked and he said that his old Bug had a lever to switch to the last chance reserve tank. Is he correct or crazy?

[IndianaVWKid]

You're buddy was correct...His OLD'er bug had one, I'm sure of it...Anything '61 and earlier (without a gas guage) had a reserver lever, just above the tunnel in the chassis, and on the firewall. It was used when you were driving along, and ran out of gas, then you flipped it over, and it went to a 1 gallon reserve. The reserve is actually, just the last gallon of gas in the bottom of the tank, the lever just switched it between to hoses that sucked gas at different heights, top one was for normal use, and the bottom, for the reserve, it's a great idea, but sometimes it takes a while to get the gas flowing again. Gas guages are a little handier to use, so consider yourself lucky.
James

[RareAir]

Reserve fuel levers were used till '61 on Beetles. Your '62 has a fuel gauge and NO reserve lever.

[79SuperVert]

Hard to believe the same engineers that came up with such a neat solution to running out of gas also came up with the world's worst way to power the windshield washer.

[[email protected]]

My '66 has a reserve lever on it.