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.