Morris Minor Owners Club

i've recently changed my petrol tank and when i took my old one apart (like you do) i was surprised to find this filter inside, it has an incredably fine mesh and is about 25mm long.

so if your were ever worried about running your tank dry, or, maybe fitting an inline filter it probably isn't necessary.

My pickup pipe strainer was completely blocked with some kind of hard varnish-like substance that had coated the inside of the tank. Annoyingly there's no way to remove the strainer short of cutting a hole in the tank. A combination of steaming the inside of the tank for a couple of hours, then sloshing pebbles and fresh petrol around in it seems to have brought the gunk off the metal and unblocked the strainer by knocking holes in the mesh. Not ideal I know, but cheaper than buying a new tank just because the strainer was blocked...

The hinge on my petrol gauge sender unit was seized too, but WD40 squirted into the sensor compartment and working it back and forth for a while has freed it up.

I should be putting the tank back on tomorrow, at which point I'll find out for sure if the treatment has worked.

My pickup pipe strainer was completely blocked with some kind of hard varnish-like substance that had coated the inside of the tank. Annoyingly there's no way to remove the strainer short of cutting a hole in the tank. A combination of steaming the inside of the tank for a couple of hours, then sloshing pebbles and fresh petrol around in it seems to have brought the gunk off the metal and unblocked the strainer by knocking holes in the mesh. Not ideal I know, but cheaper than buying a new tank just because the strainer was blocked...

The hinge on my petrol gauge sender unit was seized too, but WD40 squirted into the sensor compartment and working it back and forth for a while has freed it up

it sounds like your car had been left standing for atleast a decade - this can happen. If you are desperate, you can poke a hole in the strainer mesh to allow petrol to get through through, but then you need to be much more creful to ensure the inline filter doesn't get blocked.

rayofleamington wrote:it sounds like your car had been left standing for atleast a decade

Yes, according to the seller, his dad kept it in the garage for the past 15 years before I bought it. Luckily it was a dry garage and it hasn't suffered too badly from rot, but I'm having to rebuild the entire brake system among other things.

could that be a reason why I'm not getting any fuel through in the trav, off the road since 88

Dan_Harris wrote:could that be a reason why I'm not getting any fuel through in the trav, off the road since 88

The symptom in my case was that the pump ticked slowly but no fuel came out of it, but it all ran fine when I connected a rubber hose and a fuel can directly to the pump inlet. When I disconnected the fuel pipe from the tank, the pump instead buzzed madly, and there was a decent amount of suction when I put my finger over the end of the pipe. That showed that the pump and the pipe were OK and the blockage must be inside the tank.

I replaced the rusty steel fuel pipe with a new copper one before I figured out what the problem was, but in hindsight the old pipe was probably OK.

so its quite likely that its just gunked up then. Pump works fine, know that for sure!