Tank Cleaning.

[Glort]

Despite all the parroted fear and wornings I get about running veg fuel I haven't had a problem.... Till now. 

Last week the mrs went out and running low on fuel, did the rare thing of stopping at a servo and putting in some..... DIESEL! ( Insert shock horror, devil icon here!) 

The thing went about 2 km up the road and stopped. My son was luckily with her, diagnosed a blocked fuel filter, changed it and home they came. The thing was going through a filter every day for a week after that till I got the Irrits and put a 25L drum of gods fuel in the back and hooked up the fuel lines through the tank inspection plate. No more problems.

Obviously the tank is now full of crap and I need to clean the thing. 
I'm sure I read something a while back about the tanks not being easy or straightforward to get out so before I attempt the job next week, I thought I'd ask if this is the case and if so if there are any tips or tricks to getting the thing out?

I might drain it and then refil it with a soloution of KOH and water and drive it for a while to splash it round and hopefully remove a lot of the rubbish then drop the caustic , rinse the tank and then take the tank out to clean anything remaining and dry it properly. 

In the past when cleaning tanks I have also thrown in good handfuls of sand, pebbles and gravel to add a mechanical cleaning component to the chemical one and it's worked great. Shiny clean tanks in no time. Dunno if this tank is going to be too big to hold and swish around though. 

I'm still trying to figure out how so much crap got in the tank from just one half load of Diesel though.

There is chunks of black tar like crap coming into the filters as well as what is obviously a lot of stuff too small to see with the naked eye that causes them to deform under the suction of the IP.

 I know it wasn't my oil as I have now put through 100L already this week from the same batch I was using and aside from one chunk of crap that was obviously in the lines, the filter  has been there 5 days and is perfect as I would expect. 

I thought the fuel pumps had filters on them to stop this sort of thing but obviously not. Pretty rough when you have to pay for fuel and it stuffs you up when that has never happened with the fuel I make myself which is essentially garbage! 

 

 

I have bought the Mrs a petrol car for Christmas as she is unhappy with the diesel she has we also run on oil due to it being too small. 
This is just an interim till I can find her a Decent ML Diesel merc but I'm hoping the quality of petrol around these days is better than this diesel she bought for the truck! !!

[BigGQWesty]

Hay mate. How did you go? Kallen Westbrook Owner of Westy's Accessories