poormans way of sucking out old fuel

JeffP1167 · Oct 1, 2011

just hooked a 5/8ths heater hose in my 82's fuel tank and put the other end to my air compressor then ran it for 5 minutes and what I thought was clean fuel was just nasty looking. was about 10 y/o fuel, I'm going to remove the fill neck thing and see what the tank is like inside ....

How do you tell if the bladder is still good in one of these tanks?

I even sealed the the filler neck and heard the fuel tank banging a little so hopefully the was enough suction to clear my fuel lines as well. Probably around 7-9 gallons came out of the tank and the last was a rusty tarnish color.

prior this car ran kinda ok but smelled extremly bad and would burn my eyes.

what do you all think just dump 15 gallons in and run the car and see how it does?

JeffP1167 · Oct 1, 2011

Well I got the sending unit out and got a peek inside the tank. It actually looks extremely clean inside. If the bladder is what this black material is inside the tank it seems to be in perfect shape from what I can see.

My suction method seems to have drawn almost every sign of fuel out of the tank and only very minor remnants are still there but nothing like sludgy fuel or anything.

After 10 years of of sitting I thought for certain my sending unit would have been trashed or something but everything appears in excellent shape.

There is very minimal rusty deposits on the filler neck are but that is it.

JeffP1167 · Oct 1, 2011

here is the best shots of the inside of the tank I could get. I divorced around mid year 2005 and filled the car up about 2-3 years prior to that. I'm hoping the actual metal fuel lines under the car are still in good shape. think is what I will do is use a wrag and soak up left over fuel and then wiped the inside of the tank down with a gas soaked wrag to remove any old fuel residue. Then put in a TPI fuel pump and run the return fuel line at the sending unit to a gas can and that should thoroughly ensure the fuel system is fushed.

After that will replace the two injectors and fuel filter and see how the car runs.

I assume this liner is what is referred to as the bladder and it seems to be in perfect shape on mine.