zkeller

iTrader: (47)

Take a look at the attached pic. This is what your sending unit and gas tank will look like if your car sits longer than a year with 93 Octane 10% Ethanol enriched fuel.

If your car sits longer than a year, I highly reccomend pulling the sending unit and checking for this nastiness.

The fuel tank was just as bad. I filled the tank with Muratic Acid and let it sit for two days. Good as new. Just be sure to neutralize the acid with baking soda before final cleaning with Acetone and filling it back up with clean fuel.

XLR8

iTrader: (52)

Grotty...

bajaman

Being a veteran boater, ethanol fuel of ANY concentration has always been a concern for the marine community as all sorts of nasty things can and do happen with long-term storage (typical of most boats). A prime issue is 'phase separation', where the alcohol literally separates out from the gasoline and settles to the bottom of the tank, which obviously if you were to start an engine and it started getting an extremely high concentration of ethanol, very bad things tend to happen. Corrosion of aluminum fuel tanks like what a lot of boats have is another serious concern.

Now, having said all this...why do you think it was the ethanol in the fuel that caused your problem? I've seen a lot of fuel tanks with similar gunkification over the years and can't blame it on alcohol. Just curious. You'd be surprised how crappy a lot of gas tanks actually are, on cars older than 10 - 20+ years.

FearNoPiston

iTrader: (17)

That's a little exaggerated.... I tore apart a Fd that sat for 10 years in a field and looks nothing like this.

Neutron

iTrader: (10)

I could be wrong but it Looks like water may of gotten into your tank? Ethanol It's self is not corrosive. Adding water is when bad things happen due to sitting.

zkeller

iTrader: (47)

Cause could be from water in the fuel, not the ethanol but hard to exaggerate when it was right in front of me.

RENESISFD

iTrader: (13)

Can you confirm the condition of the sending unit and the fuel tank prior to storage?

I really doubt all of that mess was caused by the car sitting with ethanol enriched fuel in it for one year.

fd3rew

iTrader: (1)

The 10% ethanol blend wasn't a requirement 10years ago, so you probably had fuel in the tank that didn't absorb water as quickly as ethanol blended fuel would. I remember reading somewhere that ethanol fuel starts absorbing water as quickly as a month or two of storage so it is not surprising to see some crusting up inside the tank.

I had gas sitting in the fd's tank since 04 or 05 (prior to the ethanol blend) and just came around to draining it last year, I was expecting varnish and tar like fuel but after pulling the pump and sending unit I saw that my tank was spotless. The fuel did turn a bit darker but nothing like what was in the original posters pic, there was no build up or rusting. I ended up using the fuel in my lawnmower and it started right up with the ethanol free gas.

On the same note, I've seen small amount of build up/rust similiar to the op's picture in the carb bowl and float assembly of small engines when ethanol fuel has been sitting from one seasons to the next