Fuel tank cleaning

[jetter]

I believe I have sediment in my tank, and was going to try using a liquid extraction pump to suck debris off the bottom of the tank. The only access I see (short of removing the aft deck) is though the fuel fill opening. Does anyone have experience with this problem? Are there any baffles in the tank that will prevent me from reaching the V at the bottom of the tank? Boat is now on the hard, so I expect the sediment will settle out.

[N4QC]

I was able to “clean” my 144 gal w/ baffles fuel tank, using the fuel sender gauge port as the opening into the tank. The strategy was to use my own home built fuel polishing system along with a small diameter, somewhat flexible, pvc pipe of about 5 feet in length to make a wand. I used compressed air to mix things up in the tank. This require about 20 -25 gals of fuel to be left in the tank at the beginning of the process. The stirring up of the crud caused the crud to become suspended in the fuel of the main tank and ready for filtering.

The output of the filtering was placed into a temporary holding tank(s) – 5 gal fuel containers The filtered fuel was then placed back into the main tank. This processed continued for several cycles until such time as I was happy with the results.

Aeration of the fuel occurs with this method. The fuel should then be allowed to settle back to its quiescent state before using it to run your engine(s)…

Hope this helps,