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#1
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fuel tank cleaning
need help on what to clean out a fuel tank with. i tried to remove
tank from boat, and it will not move. wedged in between the live wells and seems to be stuck to the floor.its a steel 1979 tank mounted in my glastron bass boat. has bad fuel in it.i did pump out most of the fuel, but the live wells are so close to tank and it appears to be stuck in place. so now im thinking of triing to flush the tank in its place. any sugestions on how and what to use to flush tank. do i use gasoline to flush with. and should i just put something in it and then remove it.what will work? any sugestions on what to do. thanks |
#2
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fuel tank cleaning
Does it have a gauge sender you can remove? That would let you see what
you're dealing with in the tank. Also would let you make suire you are getting a syphon line all the way to the bottom. Normal fuel pickups do not go to the bottom to avoid picking up the water and crud that eventually accumulates. Alcohol might work for cleaning it. It also will help get water out. "kozmo6969" wrote in message om... need help on what to clean out a fuel tank with. i tried to remove tank from boat, and it will not move. wedged in between the live wells and seems to be stuck to the floor.its a steel 1979 tank mounted in my glastron bass boat. has bad fuel in it.i did pump out most of the fuel, but the live wells are so close to tank and it appears to be stuck in place. so now im thinking of triing to flush the tank in its place. any sugestions on how and what to use to flush tank. do i use gasoline to flush with. and should i just put something in it and then remove it.what will work? any sugestions on what to do. thanks |
#3
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fuel tank cleaning
"JamesgangNC" wrote
Alcohol might work for cleaning it. Or at the very least it might help you forget about it for a while ... |
#4
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fuel tank cleaning
"JamesgangNC" wrote in message hlink.net... Normal fuel pickups do not go to the bottom to avoid picking up the water and crud that eventually accumulates. The dip tube can't go all the way to the bottom, if it pressed against the bottom it could seal the bottom of the tube and prevent fuel from flowing. The bottom of the tube has to be high enough to allow the desired flow rates and to account for any flexing of the walls of the tank. The reason they use a dip tube, instead of a fitting off the bottom of the tank, is because they are require to do so. A marine fuel tank is not supposed to have any fittings anywhere except on the top. As far as picking up water and crud, it would be far better if the pickup was on the very bottom. You will always get a little water into the tank, either from condensation, splashes in the vent line, or from the gas station. Usually, the amount of water introduced into the tank at any one time is very small. Water settles to the bottom, and if it was sucked up right away it would either get trapped into the water separator (where someone could drain it out) or actually consumed in the engine. A single drop of water would barely make the engine hiccup. If a significant amount of water was introduced at one time you would at least have the advantage of finding out about it right away. The most common source of significant fuel contamination is from the gas station, so if the fuel was drawn from the very bottom you would be a short distance away from the fuel dock when your engine died. With the dip tube, any water that gets in will settle to the bottom and stay there. The layer of fuel above it will prevent the water from ever evaporating so it will just accumulate. Eventually you will accumulate enough that some of it gets sucked up the dip tube. This could put you into the same situation as if you had a feed from the bottom, that any additional water introduced gets sucked up, so the filter/engine only has to deal with the amount just introduced. The problem is that the tank can get agitated. When you shake things up the water doesn't all stay at the bottom, and suddenly you can be sucking up a lot of water. Without a separator a few tablespoons of water sucked up at once could shut down your engine. A reasonable sized tank could have a gallon or so of depth below the pickup tube, and if this is mostly water then shaking it up can introduce more water into the system than the separator can handle. The real bad part is that this doesn't happen when you are 100 yards from the dock. This happens when you are being beat to death in rough seas and you really, really don't want your engine to die! So, in my opinion, the dip tube is not an advantage for avoiding fuel contamination problems, it only makes it worse. Rod |
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