Fuel Tank Inspection and Refurb

First job was to drain the fuel from the tank - it makes life very much easier than lugging round a tank with fuel in it.. and has the added advantage of not leaking fuel all over your driveway when you disconnect the fuel lines!

I found that the easiest way to drain the tank was to remove the fuel line from the fuel filter (mid-way down van on drivers side). Here was mine - looking pretty grubby, covered in over-spray from the respray (3 years previous) and complete with dead spider inside.. in other words, long overdue a change!

Once the filter is disconnected, fuel flows out of the tank (fairly slowly) so you'll need to catch it. I used three 5 litre petrol cans, rotating round so that when one was filling I was pouring the other one into my car. I kept the last can full so that I had something to put back in the tank once sorted! It took a while, but eventually nothing more was coming out.

T3 fuel tanks are held in place by two steel straps that run underneath them, running parallel to the length of the van. Before undoing the straps, the tank needs to be supported - I did this with a trolley jack and a lump of wood to spread the weight. Undo the bolts from the end of each strap and with a certain amount of 'wiggling' around you can take them out altogether and leave to one side. Now, slowly and steadily lower the tank. Once you have access, you can remove the relevant pipework and the plug to the fuel level sensor - see diagram in previous post for details of what goes where. Once it is all free the tank can be dropped and removed.

Inspection of the tank showed a few small rusty bits, but only surface rust and no holes. I was lucky and the cause of my fuel loss was only that breather hose falling out. Given that I wanted to maximise the life of the tank, I decided to refurbish it. I flushed the tank out with water and a hose first. Once clear of any debris etc, I left the tank in the sunshine all day for it to dry out completely. The dry tank was then brushed with a wire brush to clean off dirt, loose paint and general debris before being painted.

After a bit of research, I chose to paint the tank in Hammerite Underbody Seal with Waxoyl - this has all the qualities that I was looking for.

Here's the tank half way through painting (showing what it was like originally):

And completed:

Once painted, I replaced all of the rubber grommets and reinstalled the breather pipes. I used regular Hammerite 'straight to rust' paint on the tank straps. The tank was then ready to be refitted, but not before I'd completed the following:

* Replace rubber 'neck' on fuel filler
* Replace fuel lines and filters

Read about that in the following posts.

Fuel tank and lines - safety first

From day one of van ownership, I'd known that there was an issue of some sort with the fuel tank - if you've read this blog from day one you will have heard about my petrol station issues after collection.

Much research had led me to conclude one thing above everything else - if you don't know the history of your van in detail, replace the fuel lines as soon as you can. Over time the fuel lines can develop holes, leading to leaking fuel. This can cause nasty engine bay fires that at best burn out your beloved van.. at worst could kill you. I decided that heeding this advice was wise and that the best time to replace the pipes was whilst sorting out the fuel tank issues.

Once again, I started to prepare for this by reading the Haynes Manual which details the fuel system and tank layout pretty well.

I decided to draw a simple layout of the system in my van for future reference:

The T3 van has a slightly odd set up for fuel storage. The tank itself has a U-shaped profile, so has a valley up the middle, but a single 'chamber'. As you fill the tank, the void space fills with fuel - but the air has to come out somewhere. For this reason there are breather pipes at the top of each void, connected to each other and to two expansion tanks that live in the wheel arches.

On my van, the drivers side breather pipe had detached from the tank (but was still attached to the expansion tank). This meant that when filling with fuel there was an open hole in the top of the offside raised part of the tank - which is lower than the filler neck - so fuel poured out of there.

These tanks do rust in the 'valley' as it is a water trap, so I felt it was a good idea to remove the tank, replace all of the rubber grommets and fuel lines, paint the tank and reinstall.