Fuel pump stuff (everybody take a look)

[Roy Wendell]

snip
>>Roy Wendell wrote:

>> best I could. ****WARNING-although most shop vacs now keep the motor
>> cooling air and vacuum air paths separate there is still the
>> possibility of explosion due to fuel vapors passing through the
>> motor. At a minimum you should do as I did and use the exhaust side
>> of the shop vac to ventilate the tank for at least a day. The inside
>> of the tank should be bone dry with no dark areas visible. If you
>> blow yourself up don't send your lawyers my way. I'm just an idiot
>> who can't afford to pay someone else to fix my cars nor can I afford
>> a new one. Don't bother suing.****
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>
>Don't use a vacuum, thats not a good situation no matter how it's lain out. 
>Use some 3/8" fuel line and create a siphon, then use the suction from the 
>siphon to get the stuff out. Thats a lesson from fish tank cleaning ;-). I 
>got the tank spic-n-span loosing only maybe half a gallon of fuel or less.
>
>-Cody Forbes

I did the same thing to get the majority of the liquid fuel out. My goal was to get the inside of the tank as clean as possible so I actually went around the inside with a Scotchbrite pad as far as my arm could reach. That meant that I spent a lot of time inside the tank and the fumes were killing me. That's why I decided to dry it out completely. The ideal situation would be to have an air powered venturi style vacuum but I did the best I could with what I had. Like I said, it's not recommended but I felt safe enough after airing the tank out for a day to use the shop vac. My tank is probably an extreme case as the 200tq spent about five years sitting on a lot before I rescued it. The previous owner apparently ran the original motor until the timing belt broke and then for some stupid reason thought that a podunk Ford dealership was capable of installing a junkyard motor from a 5k turbo. It never ran after that until I came along and towed it away. Why they insisted on putting an MC1 motor in a MC2 car instead of just having the head rebuilt I'll never know.

Roy