OK I'm not sure if this has been posted before but I'm posting anyway.
If your unfortunate enough to win the loser of the month award like me yesterday and fill your diesel hilux with ULP, this might help you out.
Luckily for me my ute was virtually dry before I did this and probably only had about one or two litres of diesel left in the tank, so the premium ULP was salvageable for my missers’s car and my dirt bike.... Also luckily I found the error before starting the engine and had a mate tow me back to my place.
So I found a way to get all of the fuel out of the plugless fuel tank without having to remove the tank.
Tools required:
Siphon hose
10mm socket and ratchet
1 meter 10mm OD beverage tube
1 meter 14mm OD beverage tube and barbed joiner
Containers to capture recovered fuel
Steps:
1.Park the car on as level a surface as possible.
2. Siphon fuel from the tank. Not possible through the filler cap as there are blocking bar inside there. The rubber hose that connects to the top of the tank from the filler tube is accessible easily and the hose clamp can easily be removed with a small 10mm ratchet giving access to the spigot on the op of the tank. I was able to extract 57 litres by siphoning from here.
3. Replace the filler tube hose and hose clamp. (this must be done now).
4. Under the vehicle at the top front of the tank there are 2 hoses, supply (larger) and return with spring type clamps. Remove the clamps and take off the rubber hoses off the fuel tubes running along the chassis. Have a drip tray ready as you will have about 500 ml of fuel dribble out of these hoses and pipes at this point.
5. Connect the beverage tubes to the rubber fuel hoses that run to the top of the fuel tank. The smaller one I had fitted inside the smaller hose (return line) and I used a barbed joiner I had lying around for the larger one (supply line). You need air tight connections here.
6. Now with the fuel filler cap on so that the tank is air tight, put the end of the larger one of the beverage tubes into you recovery container. Apply light air pressure to the end of the smaller return line beverage tube. I did this with my mouth and just blew the tank pressure up with my lungs, which was enough to start the flow out of the supply line. I just blew pressure up and folded over the hose to seal it and I needed to add pressure about every 30 seconds. I was able to completely empty the tank this way without removing it and the entire process took about 1 hour. You’ll know when it’s empty as only air will come out of the supply line.
7. Put the fuel lines back together and then put at least 10 litres of clean diesel into the tank. Get yourself to a servo ASAP to fill the tank and dilute any remaining petrol with diesel. Diesel will readily mix with ULP so this short trip won’t be a problem and the minor amount of petrol was cause ant problems. You might notice the engine has more power on you way to fill the tank completely…..
I calculated by my recovered fuel and fuel purchases that I got it empty to within a litre with this method and didn’t have to remove the tank.
Warning: Caltex fuel stations have the vortex label on both the premium ULP and diesel filler nozzles and it is easy to absent mindedly make this error. I will be writing to Woolworths/Caltex about this….