Water in Fuel Tanks

[BDA]

Ok, I’ve been following this thread and seeing all the proposed bulkhead type fixes. Everyone must know that in order to implement these ideas you must put a wrench on the interior part of the fitting at the bottom of the tank and before that, they have to insert that interior piece into a hole at the bottom of the tank.

Am I the only one who cannot imagine a way to do that? Or am I just lacking in useful imagination?

[4129R]

Ok, I’ve been following this thread and seeing all the proposed bulkhead type fixes. Everyone must know that in order to implement these ideas you must put a wrench on the interior part of the fitting at the bottom of the tank and before that, they have to insert that interior piece into a hole at the bottom of the tank.

Am I the only one who cannot imagine a way to do that? Or am I just lacking in useful imagination?

Access through the hole where the fuel tank gauge sender has been removed for the left tank.

For the right tank, if you thread an electrical wire from the filler hole down to the hole you have made for the new bulkhead fitting, you can slide the new fitting down the wire into place. Then either have on the outside the sealing washer, the nut to tighten, then two nuts locked together to hold the fitting from turning, or use a pair of grips to hold the outlet pipe while you tighten the outside nut.

I took out my left hand tank today. It is beyond repair, so I will use it to practice gynaecological mechanics as soon as the bulkhead fitting arrives from China. 

[Dilkris]

..... Or am I just lacking in useful imagination?

Yes 

[BDA]

Thanks for the explanation 4129R! The wire trick is pretty cleaver!

Dilkris, you are right! I was lacking in useful imagination but you don't have to rub it in!   

[Dilkris]

As you were hopefully aware - it was only a joke I couldn't resist. 
Your provenance on this forum BDA shows your level of imagination to be without question.   

[BDA]

Delkris, I tried to choose emojis to make it clear that I was "speaking" tongue-in-cheek" and that NO offense was taken! Sometimes hard to do with text. I appreciate your wanting to clarify your post but it wasn't necessary.

[4129R]

I can never work out what the emojis are saying, they are always too small.

It turns out since I fitted the left hand tank about a year ago, a large hole just behind the filler tube had appeared, about 3/4" in diameter.

I have no idea how this hole appeared but it was out of sight, right by the rubber tube joining the tank to the flip top filler cap.

So rainwater literally poured through the open hole into the tank.

Similarly the resin poured through the same hole, out of sight, and so much poured through, I could not even see the outlet tube in the bottom, and I had to drill through the resin to drain the left tank. So the left tank has been assigned to gyno-mechanics. A new tank is £400, so it was worth exploring the fitting of a tank outlet, until I saw the complete mess when I took the tank out this morning.

[BDA]

I'm glad you at least found the problem!

[4129R]

I'm glad you at least found the problem!

1) How does a large rust hole appear in the top of a tank ?

2) How does rainwater get in, in large quantities, through the mesh grills in the engine cover, and on to the top of the tanks? It obviously does, in large quantities, and rots tank tops. Also it gets on to the cylinder head, and sits when #1 and #2 spark plugs are, and rusts them in place.

Maybe we need to cover those air vent grills when the car is sitting not in use.

As an aside, when you open the engine cover, if it has rainwater on it, that water pours on to the cylinder head.

Plus when you open the front cover, water pours on to the radiator fan, with later models having an ally L plate over the fan motor to direct the rainwater away.

It seems Europas do not like rain. Most doors leak, and old windscreens leak and rot the wooden dashboard.

[Fotog]

So you're telling us that your problem with water in the fuel is from a hole 3/4" in diameter on top of the LH tank?

[4129R]

So you're telling us that your problem with water in the fuel is from a hole 3/4" in diameter on top of the LH tank?

which appeared in the 12 months since I rebuilt the car, and checked and fitted the fuel tanks.

I could not see the hole, as it was behind the rubber tube, so not visible from looking above the battery.

It just shows how easily the tank tops rust, and how much rainwater gets into the engine compartment and sits on the tank tops, which conveniently have a 5mm lip all around the tank perimeters, so rainwater does not drain off the tank tops, but just sits on the tank tops and rusts the steel tops.  Design faults.

[Fotog]

"I could not see the hole, as it was behind the rubber tube, so not visible from looking above the battery."

Well, ok.  But I'm kind of amazed that you didn't pour water on top of the tanks, one at a time, before engaging us in 4 pages of discussion.  Crikey!

LOL! 

[BDA]

I always thought the way the gas tanks were constructed was a bad idea. Water gets on top of the tank somehow and has nowhere else to go. It would have been much better (but probably more expensive) to not have that lip surrounding the top of the tank. I have seen some that have lasted a long time so it's not necessarily a disaster waiting to happen but why leave open the possibility?

As for the water coming off the engine cover on to the head, there's supposed to be a rubber seal (#31 in the attached picture) that attaches to the horizontal lip over the front of the engine whose job I presume is to keep water from spilling onto the spark plugs. I think I saw where our own JB had an aluminum angle popped onto that horizontal lip for the same reason. Do you have that?

[4129R]

As for the water coming off the engine cover on to the head, there's supposed to be a rubber seal (#31 in the attached picture) that attaches to the horizontal lip over the front of the engine whose job I presume is to keep water from spilling onto the spark plugs. I think I saw where our own JB had an aluminum angle popped onto that horizontal lip for the same reason. Do you have that?

On the 9 TCs I have worked on (2 in 1979 and 7 recently) I have never seen that rubber seal.

[EuropaTC]

I don't think it's clear in the parts manual but on my car I had a seal along the front of the engine bay which looked very much like the simple boot seal used on the Elans.

I doubt the original ever really "sealed" the engine bay but it did form a channel which stopped rain from dripping into the front and probably more in hope than reality, directed water down the sides of the engine bay to the rear. Park facing down hill and there's no chance.

 It was tatty and I replaced it at some point with a simple panel trim - photo - which in practice does the same job of stopping rain ending up on the ignition coil. There's no indication of anything else being fitted that I could see.

Brian