retmil46
Full Access Member
Over the past 6 years, several times when on a trip, or even from a local station on occasion, I've ended up getting a considerable amount of trash pumped into the fuel tank and caught in the filters.
Two years ago when passing thru northern Florida, just a 5 gallon top-off at a station alongside I-10, caused me two hours later to be pulled over at a rest area swapping out fuel filters - the clear water/sediment bowl on the bottom of the primary filter has still-intact whole bugs, gnats, and mosquitoes, sucked up from inside the tank and pumped all the way to the primary filter.
Just a month or so ago, someone in the local tanker fleet apparently wasn't too careful about cleaning out their tanks, and many diesel owners ended up getting what looked like wet tobacco or wet rotted leaves/mulch pumped into their fuel tanks, myself included. One friend had to drop the tank on his service truck and have it cleaned out. I got a bad enough dose in my CRD that it wouldn't start on one occasion and I had to disconnect the fuel lines inside the engine compartment and blow them out back to the tank with compressed air to clear the clog. When I flipped on my lift pump to reprime the lines into a gallon jug, I got big clumps of the same material being flushed thru. I can tell there's still a good amount in the tank, because I start losing pressure from the lift pump when it gets down to around 1/3 to 1/4 tank.
Plus, there's no in-tank strainer on the CRD - whatever gets sucked up into the fuel line in the tank will travel all the way to the filters in the engine bay.
The metal part of the fuel filler neck is approx 1 3/4" ID for about 4 or 5 inches, then necks down to approx 3/4" for another 4 to 6 inches before it hooks into the fuel filler hose.
My idea is to dremel out the fuel nozzle restriction and remove the metal flap as well - such that you've got essentially a open piece of 1 3/4" tube - and then stick a piece of wire mesh or other type of strainer material down inside this large part of the filler tube, to catch all the bugs and large crap that might come out of the service station pump.
You could vacuum it out in place or pull it out for cleaning as needed, and keep all that crap from going inside your fuel tank - and avoid the hassle of having to drop the entire fuel tank for cleaning.
Two years ago when passing thru northern Florida, just a 5 gallon top-off at a station alongside I-10, caused me two hours later to be pulled over at a rest area swapping out fuel filters - the clear water/sediment bowl on the bottom of the primary filter has still-intact whole bugs, gnats, and mosquitoes, sucked up from inside the tank and pumped all the way to the primary filter.
Just a month or so ago, someone in the local tanker fleet apparently wasn't too careful about cleaning out their tanks, and many diesel owners ended up getting what looked like wet tobacco or wet rotted leaves/mulch pumped into their fuel tanks, myself included. One friend had to drop the tank on his service truck and have it cleaned out. I got a bad enough dose in my CRD that it wouldn't start on one occasion and I had to disconnect the fuel lines inside the engine compartment and blow them out back to the tank with compressed air to clear the clog. When I flipped on my lift pump to reprime the lines into a gallon jug, I got big clumps of the same material being flushed thru. I can tell there's still a good amount in the tank, because I start losing pressure from the lift pump when it gets down to around 1/3 to 1/4 tank.
Plus, there's no in-tank strainer on the CRD - whatever gets sucked up into the fuel line in the tank will travel all the way to the filters in the engine bay.
The metal part of the fuel filler neck is approx 1 3/4" ID for about 4 or 5 inches, then necks down to approx 3/4" for another 4 to 6 inches before it hooks into the fuel filler hose.
My idea is to dremel out the fuel nozzle restriction and remove the metal flap as well - such that you've got essentially a open piece of 1 3/4" tube - and then stick a piece of wire mesh or other type of strainer material down inside this large part of the filler tube, to catch all the bugs and large crap that might come out of the service station pump.
You could vacuum it out in place or pull it out for cleaning as needed, and keep all that crap from going inside your fuel tank - and avoid the hassle of having to drop the entire fuel tank for cleaning.
