Flushing Fuel Tank

[Jdub07]

I will be attempting to flush my fuel tank this weekend. I looked around the how to but didn't seem to find any info on this. From looking under the car and in my manual it doesn't look to be TO difficult. Can anyone shed some more light on doing this. I'm not in a hurry to get it done, I just want to get it done right and safe. Thanks

[smufguy]

ummm.......... not to be sacrastic, but u cant flush ur tank. u can like drain it and clean it if u want to. from the back of the car, if u look under ur car, there will be a 14mm bolt on the left corner of the tank. use something like a new oil pan and drain the remaining gas into it. i would highly recommend that u drive the car till the fuel warning light shows up and stays lit up. and dont smell the gas, it burns ur nose.

so anywayz, while that bitch it draining remove the carpet from the trunk and put it over ur car seat and remove the two circular plates. they are sticky. disconnect all electrical connectors and hoses from it. since u have a carb, u gotta unhook all the hoses that go to the fuel filter and vapour and shit, u will look at it from the bottom. remove all that shit.

then once the tank is done, just close the drain bolt. and remove the two braces holding the damn tank. by this time. u better have the car in jack stands and have a jack under ur tank pressed on it. once u get the harness of the tank taken out, slowly lower the jack until the tank like falls down. shit is a lil heavy. then u will take out th tank after unhooking a lil hoses up on the driver side rear axle.

after u got the tank out, clean the top and all around it, esp near the fuel pump area and shit. it will be sandy, and greasy. clean it real good. then u take out the fuel pump by removing the 10 mm bolts on them after removing the thing that is right above the cover of the pump. then the pump come off and u do what u wanna do to the tank. u will be suprised how clean the tank is.

my tank looks spanking new inside still silverish and not a trace of rust anywhere.

hope this helps.

[GreenMachine]

Or a lazier way to do it, is drain it and jack the front end up so that it all runs out. Then you could put the plug in and put like a 1l some methlyhydrate in the tank from the top by removing pump. lower car down, raise it back up. I had a floor jack so up/down a bit to slosh it up and drain it again.

not afecting as the other method though,

[smufguy]

u mean 'effective' machine boy? :)

[Jdub07]

Originally posted by smufguy
ummm.......... not to be sacrastic, but u cant flush ur tank. u can like drain it and clean it if u want to. from the back of the car, if u look under ur car, there will be a 14mm bolt on the left corner of the tank. use something like a new oil pan and drain the remaining gas into it. i would highly recommend that u drive the car till the fuel warning light shows up and stays lit up. and dont smell the gas, it burns ur nose.

so anywayz, while that bitch it draining remove the carpet from the trunk and put it over ur car seat and remove the two circular plates. they are sticky. disconnect all electrical connectors and hoses from it. since u have a carb, u gotta unhook all the hoses that go to the fuel filter and vapour and shit, u will look at it from the bottom. remove all that shit.

then once the tank is done, just close the drain bolt. and remove the two braces holding the damn tank. by this time. u better have the car in jack stands and have a jack under ur tank pressed on it. once u get the harness of the tank taken out, slowly lower the jack until the tank like falls down. shit is a lil heavy. then u will take out th tank after unhooking a lil hoses up on the driver side rear axle.

after u got the tank out, clean the top and all around it, esp near the fuel pump area and shit. it will be sandy, and greasy. clean it real good. then u take out the fuel pump by removing the 10 mm bolts on them after removing the thing that is right above the cover of the pump. then the pump come off and u do what u wanna do to the tank. u will be suprised how clean the tank is.

my tank looks spanking new inside still silverish and not a trace of rust anywhere.

hope this helps.


Thank you Smurf. Sorry for the wrong terminology of "flushing" my tank to cleaning it out. Think it would be a good idea to just put in a new fuel pump while I'm in there? I seem to be going through more fuel filters than usual. Could something else be causing this?

[smufguy]

not a problem bro and dont be sorry man.. i was just messing with you. i dont mind what terminology u use. sometimes we wanna say something but just cant get the words right :). it happens to me all the time and thats why i use words like 'that thingie' and 'this thingie'.

how do u know that ur fuel filter is going bad? if something is wrong with the fuel feeding, i dont know. I have heard that some gas tanks having flakes of rust in them, but i found not a trace on mine. Ususually they are like anodized or some kinda electrically treated to stop rust. even the outside is painted black to prevent rusting. But yeah, do check ur lil filter bag thingie on the bottom of your fuel pump. if its messed up or either torn out. change it, i dont know how u can get the filter bag on it, but dealer or the Majestichonda should be the answer.

i wont recommend using a new fuel pump if ur existing one is messiing up or u just need a performance (high volume) pump. they are like 80 bucks so u wanna check that out and see if u wanna use it.

if u have any more questions, feel free to ask me. i have done it and i can let u in about stuff either i forgot to tell

[Jdub07]

Thanks, I'm guessing the filters are getting dirty fast because after a couple months she sputters almost like I haven't changed the filters in a long time. I thought maybe it was a bad tank of gas at first because it seems to go away after new filters. But I've gotten new gas since then and Sputter, New Filter, Sputter gone, month or more later, sputter, new filter, sputter gone. and so on. so I was thinking something is in the tank. I don't know much about our fuel system so what better place to ask then here. The only thing I know how to do with the fuel system is change the filters so basically I really dont' know what is causing this. I was thinking maybe my carb was screwed up buy then why would new filters take the problem away for a short time?

[smufguy]

do u change the filter near the gas tank or the one in the engin e bay.

[Jdub07]

Originally posted by smufguy
do u change the filter near the gas tank or the one in the engin e bay.

I would always change both filters. I took the tank out this morning (Saturday). Luckly I haven't been to the gas station for a while cause that bitch is heavy. In anycase me and pops drained the rest of the gas to find that the tank has either rust or major deposits of some kind. We are stumped as to how this got in there. Maybe from the car sitting to long or stale gas?? Have no clue. I don't know if there is a way to clean it out or if I should get another tank. Any suggestions? Is there some sort of solution I can put in and clean it? Thanks

[smufguy]

from the shade tree mechanic, what they said was to put like rollar balls in it (ball bearing kinda shit) and roll it around to get the rust shit out. Its normal to hear someone get stuff like that in their tank, but lucky me, not a speck. SO u found ur source and its a dirty fuel tank. i would say, u shoudl get a new tank. BUt the debate is, from where? u wanna spend 270 bucks and get a new one? or just go with a used one, with ur fingers crossed that its not in the same condition as urs?

[dXsquared]

i had mine boiled out. i had an old school caddie and the tank was dirty so i got it "boiled." it cost 75 bucks and it would be less if the tank wasnt the size of a bathtub. the carb got all full of shit and so did the fuel filters. that helped it tho.
Travis

[Jdub07]

Originally posted by DXHATCHBACK
i had mine boiled out. i had an old school caddie and the tank was dirty so i got it "boiled." it cost 75 bucks and it would be less if the tank wasnt the size of a bathtub. the carb got all full of shit and so did the fuel filters. that helped it tho.
Travis

Damn that sounds like a great idea. Although I have never heard of doing that? What kind of shop does that or should I just start letting my fingers do the walking in the yellow pages?

[smufguy]

yeah, yellow pages are a good way to do it and do call them up before u visit them so u dont waste time roaming around in ur car.

[Immeraufdemhund]

I'm confused about the balls in the tank. How does that get the rust out and garbage out of it?

[Jdub07]

Just got a call back from a high school here in town that will boil the tank out for free. They have an auto body and tech shop. I used to take an auto body class there way back in the day. I didn't know they had the means to do the boil but thought it wouldn't hurt to ask. The new tech teacher called and said I can bring it in NEXT Friday and he would call me when they got it done. :D

[Jdub07]

Got my tank back yesterday after work and was up most the night with a friend of mine putting that bitch back in. She fired right up this moring and drove just fine. One thing though, I get a little backfire when the car is cold and when shifting from 2nd to 3rd and sometimes 3rd to 4th? What could cause that...rich mix? To much fuel? How do I adjust this? At least I got to drive her again its been like two weeks. She seems really happy to have a clean tank. Either she has better response than before or I'm just used to driving a heavy Explorer.