The jerry can fire thread just reminded me of an incident we had
couple of weeks ago , which I typed up but never posted due to fires.
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Stopped to fill up main
tank in Patrol yesterday , it was 45c
and sub
tank had not been used and was about full.
Needed 135lt , and as I started to fill the main
tank I noticed a little bubbling from the subtank filler.
Thought nothing of it and continued daydreaming as I filled up the main
tank.
With about 110lt in main
tank I looked at the petrol filler points and noticed the fuel was slowly pouring out of the sub
tank filler onto the ground but the main
tank filler looked perfect and petrol was still going in.
Interesting situation as I looked below the car at a large pool of petrol.
For the next 5 minutes (a long time in a queue at the pump) fuel continued to slowly pour out of sub
tank filler hole onto ground.
Potentially a nasty enough situation to make one panic but my evaluation was that the situation was stable with petrol evaporating and dissappearing quickly in the very hot wind so I just waited till everything settled down.
Lost an estimate of 3 liters.
The pump had timed out by then, so I paid the bill, noted fuel on ground had gone and drove off.
Two hours later when temp dropped to 40c I went back and put the remaining 25 lt into the main
tank without any
sign of bubbly or fuel issues from the sub
tank filler.
Trying to analyze what could have happened !
Haven't looked at manual just yet but I'm sure that
overflow from a patrol GU's subtank is piped into the main
tank.
Possible senario - The fuel hose into the main
tank might have partly collasped, restricting, but not fully stopping flow into main
tank.
Perhaps such restriction caused fuel to back up and feed back into the sub
tank until it overflowed.
Don't like coincidences and the above senario would require just the right amount of obstruction otherwise the main filler would have overflowed.
Engineers like to have reasons for things and I'm not happy about my conclusions.
Any further ideas guys ?