"Water Remover" experiment

Joined
Aug 30, 2018
Messages
133
Location
Central Illinois
So there's a farm truck at my job with a pinhole leak in the gas tank, a 95 Tacoma that runs awful due to water in the fuel system. When we have the time I'm planning on dropping the fuel tank, cleaning it out and either patching it or using a product that coats the inside of the tank. I'm sure I'll have to do the fuel filter as well.

But it's planting time and I doubt poor little Bill (the truck) will get any attention for a while yet. Any fuel additives BITOG would like to see tested in these extreme conditions in the mean time? ISOHeet or similar? I'd love to try some out and report back if they improve the way little Bill runs at all.

Right now there's no power from the gas pedal intermittently, lots of backfiring, and if the tank is low the motor will die pretty frequently. I usually get about halfway to the field we're in that day before I have to stop, crank the engine and get started roaring and puttering up the road again. It's kinda fun to drive on account of it not being my truck!

Got an additive you think might help? Let me know and if it's not prohibitively expensive I'll give it a try and report back!
 
Alcohol, for example, is a long molecule one end of which attaches to water while the other attaches to other petroleum molecules.

The more you add, the more water goes through the system at one time.

A truck needed on the farm needs maintenance.
 
Originally Posted by Kira
Alcohol, for example, is a long molecule one end of which attaches to water while the other attaches to other petroleum molecules.

The more you add, the more water goes through the system at one time.

A truck needed on the farm needs maintenance.

Is there a known safe amount of IPA you can add to a gas tank? Would be interesting to try.

We have a couple early 90's GMC 2500s that are the real work horses, they don't look pretty but are in great mechanical shape and run beautifully rain snow or shine. This Tacoma is sort of the black sheep out here, it needs a lot more than this gas tank job but one thing at a time I suppose, he's not exactly necessary but you can never have too many running trucks
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Interesting side note, the owner hasn't changed the oil in the Tacoma in 4 years, hasn't been topped off in a full year and still reads full on the dipstick.

Every other piece of machinery out there gets LOF and grease once a year, except poor Bill. It's a bit of a side project of mine bringing him back to farm worthy condition, keeps me busy on rainy and slow days.
 
Good Americans neglecting the Japanese truck? That doesn't seem economical.

What Bill needs is a crankcase of fresh oil, a trannie drain & fill and a nice run up to Minneapolis and back.

....a Middle America Tune-Up.
 
Originally Posted by 4WD
A marine fuel stabilizer is easy to find … I use a multipurpose but had to order.

Techron Marine for corrosion protection and detergents.

www.walmart.com/ip/Techron-Protection-Plus-Marine-Fuel-System-Treatment-10oz


I'll have to give that a try! Sounds like it could make a noticeable difference. No replacement for a proper repair obviously but I see this as an interesting opportunity to put some additives to the test in the meantime.

Originally Posted by Kira
Good Americans neglecting the Japanese truck? That doesn't seem economical.

What Bill needs is a crankcase of fresh oil, a trannie drain & fill and a nice run up to Minneapolis and back.

....a Middle America Tune-Up.


Maybe at the end of the season they'll let me borrow Bill for a nice little trip, after fresh lube and plugs of course. And a small mountain of repairs
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I sawa video of a guy that used a fuel water separater (oil filter with a clear bottom and a drain.). to pump out old gass from his boat a dn strain off the water. he then added a dose of octane boost to the filtered gas and mixed it with fresh high octaine gas. he was able to burn it them.
 
My boat has one … it's on the suction side and not sure how the OP could plumb …
Was this a portable rig up he was using ?
 
Startron seems to help with this problem, too, along with a nice fillup of E10 premium. E10 will latch onto the water, the Startron will help with burning the bad gas, along with the new 93 octane.
 
Only drive it to the junkyard while it still runs well enough to do that, or forget about half measures and do it right by replacing the fuel tank now.

If it needs to be used soon, spend your time fixing it right instead of posting on the internet about things which will at best result in just trying to keep using it unrepaired and potentially causing damage.

It should not be fun to you to ruin someone else's vehicle by driving it with backfires or worse. I don't even have any assurance that your diagnosis of pinhole leak plus water is accurate or whether there were, or are now that people kept driving it, more problems.

If the employer refuses to fix it because money is that tight, you should spend your off time looking for another job where they can afford to fix things properly instead of driving around vehicles with rusted out tanks that could leak fuel out at any moment which is not safe.

Putting additives in is ridiculous. Drain the tank, put fresh fuel in, keep it out of rain/water, and if it still doesn't run right 100% of the time, stop driving it till it's repaired properly.
 
Most additives are pretty useless when there's already oxygenated fuel. And the key to oxygenated fuel getting rid of water is that the fuel has to be used up where the water just goes out in the exhaust. In the meantime it keeps the water from pooling which can cause corrosion.

Just use up the fuel in whatever way you can, because that's the best way to get water out of it short of draining the tank. Worst case is you have phase separation and the ability of the oxygenate to mix the water with the fuel is gone. But you say the problems are intermittent, which certainly sounds like there's phase separation.
 
Originally Posted by 4WD
My boat has one … it's on the suction side and not sure how the OP could plumb …
Was this a portable rig up he was using ?



yes it was a protable setup with and electric fuel pump. wattery gas went in. less wattery gas came out,

the water binds to the ethanol which is what raises the octane, you have some pretty low octane gas after filtering it, that is why the octane boost. that will get you close, the mix with high octane gas to get you even closer,

then burn it fast as you can and learn your lesson.
 
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