Fuel tank purge and clean - STX

Bryan's marine or Gallows bay marina.

Contact a generator service company. They may have a filtration system which they use to clean diesel fuel tanks for standby generators for their customers.

Jim

Someone said that St. Croix Marine has a fuel polisher. I went there and asked. They said Bruce does fuel polishing.

I spoke to Bruce. He does not have a fuel polisher. If you can take your boat (or, presumably, your truck) to his dock, he will use a pump and filter to filter your fuel at $3/gallon plus $80 and other costs and put it back in your tank.

My guest, Matt, an engineer from Chicago, drained the tank today, which is something I had been asking for since November. No one on the island seemed to be able to solve the problem. We will now flush the tank with fresh fuel and add a stabilizer to clean the sides and bottom of the tank.

My guess is that if you have a boat or truck that has old fuel in the tank, your fuel is likely contaminated with algae, bacteria, and water.

When they want to clean algae out of our planes fuel tank they put in Biobor. Not sure if this helps or not.

One of the surest and easiest ways to prevent this from happening is to try and always keep your fuel tank full or close to full, which, if you have a sailboat, isn't hard to do.

Yes, some kind of algae killer is helpful. Problem is it kills the buggers but their carcasses remain as sludge at the bottom of the tank.

Today, we drained all the old dirty fuel and put in fresh clean fuel. Then we added StarTron. Their web site says, "Based on naturally occurring enzymes, this unique formulation disperses moisture, reduces emissions, increase fuel economy and power, eliminates carbon build-up, cleans injectors, and stabilizes fuel chemistry for at least two years."

I'm just happy Matt was able to completely empty the tank and stir up the sludge so it could be pumped out. Sailing tomorrow! 🙂

My engine uses so little fuel that it's hard to use it up. My guess is I'll have to resort to pumping out old fuel from time to time.

BTW, old fuel and oil can be left at DPNR at Peter's Rest. East gate.

Hey Edward glad to hear you got it worked out.

Speaking from personal experience if you keep tank topped off as often as you can and you keep biocide in it like the StarTron then you shouldn't have many problem going forward and shouldn't need to drain it again.

If you consistently have problems with poor quality fuel you can always buy your own polisher. In addition to standard filtering with the engine running I had the system on our boat set up to (when activated) pump fuel from the tank through the filters and back into the tank so basically we had a built in polisher than didn't take up additional space. Pretty neat stuff..

Count, That's a great idea. Dave on Gloria at Green Cay Marina made his own and it's installed on the boat.