Draining fuel tanks....

[NealB]

By the state of her fuel filters, I guess my old motorboat has a fairly bad case of fuel bug.

I've decided to drain the tanks, so I can hopefully clean things up (with the help of bits of tube and Marine 16 fuel treatment).

I've been given an empty, but shiny new, rustfree oil drum, into which I will drain the fuel.

All labels have vanished, so I've no idea, precisely, what was in the drum, other than some sort of Total oil.

The inside of the drum has a very clean, very smooth feeling coating.

Now, here's my, possibly impossible and probably dumb, question: do I need to get every drop of the coating out, before putting in the diesel, or is it likely that the coating will mix quite happily with the fuel?

Thanks for any tips, and don't hold back on the criticism!!!

 

[lw395]

A small quantity of most oil products in say 50l of diesel won't be a problem, but why not rinse the drum with a litre of diesel or something?

In dealing with bugged diesel, I find the most useful thing is lots of medium sized containers in which dirty fuel can be left to settle.
The polyethylene bottles milk comes in are good, although the caps can't be trusted too far, so keep them upright.

I would try to only put clean fuel in your new drum.
Keep dodgy fuel settling in smaller bottles or cans and end up with all the crud in some small cans for disposal.

If you leave the 'soup' settling you can recover a lot of the fuel (it's easier than throwing it away). Some of mine was in bottles behind the shed for a couple of weeks.

A pela with a big bore hose is very useful. Take as much clean diesel as you can from the top of the tank and filter it into the drum.
Then stir up the remains and suck it out, dump it into cans for settling.
Once a can has settled, take the clean off the top, filter it into the drum and leave the dirty to settle more.

If you are lucky, most of the crud can be sucked out as liquid using the pela. If you are unlucky there will be tarry stuff that needs to be scraped, or worse.

 

[NealB]

A small quantity of most oil products in say 50l of diesel won't be a problem, but why not rinse the drum with a litre of diesel or something?

In dealing with bugged diesel, I find the most useful thing is lots of medium sized containers in which dirty fuel can be left to settle.
The polyethylene bottles milk comes in are good, although the caps can't be trusted too far, so keep them upright.

I would try to only put clean fuel in your new drum.
Keep dodgy fuel settling in smaller bottles or cans and end up with all the crud in some small cans for disposal.

If you leave the 'soup' settling you can recover a lot of the fuel (it's easier than throwing it away). Some of mine was in bottles behind the shed for a couple of weeks.

A pela with a big bore hose is very useful. Take as much clean diesel as you can from the top of the tank and filter it into the drum.
Then stir up the remains and suck it out, dump it into cans for settling.
Once a can has settled, take the clean off the top, filter it into the drum and leave the dirty to settle more.

If you are lucky, most of the crud can be sucked out as liquid using the pela. If you are unlucky there will be tarry stuff that needs to be scraped, or worse.

Thanks .... that all sounds eminently sensible, without being too onerous (time and money wise).

I've acquired quite a few 10 litres containers that I can use as 'settling' jars.

Just got to pluck up the courage to get stuck in!!