Fuel Tank Stupidness
Alrighty then.
So I know I haven't been online much lately, its because neither has my truck.
Feel free to skip my rambling and see more of my rambling in photographic form.
About 3 weekends ago while I was at work, one of my coworkers comes and finds me and tells me my truck is leaking gasoline pretty badly. So I immediately go outside and look at it. I could smell the gas as soon as I left the building and I park a good 50 yards away.
I find a huge puddle of gas all around the back end of my truck (I should have taken a photo, it was horrible). After looking under the truck to try and find the leak, I see that the bolt for the rear UCA right by the gas tank had come out and the arm was just hanging there right infront of the tank, only bolted in the axle side. And on the tank was a nice mark where the arm had hit it and ripped it open. Apparently what had happened was the link slammed into the tank while I went over a bump or something and punctured the tank. At this point the tank had leaked down to that point and wasnt leaking much anymore.
So after composing myself from the shock of losing at least 6 gallons I had bought just hours before, I drove the truck home. And there she sat for a week while I sourced new fuel tanks. Keep in mind I work full time and go to school full time, so I have about 10 hours of free time a week.
I found a tank from a local shop that was from a '96; so during a mod day with the tacomaworld guys which I hosted at my house, we started to switch the tanks.
To make the Job easier, we just punched another hole in my already F'd tank to get the gas out into buckets and gas cans. :smash:
After the tank drained, we pulled it out and took a look at the damage up close.
Not much, but it was enough to waste a lot of fuel.
Then we compared the two to make sure everything was the same... it wasnt. :redbrick:
The dirty one on the left is my '02 tank, the cleaned up one on the right is the '96 tank.
The '01-'02 tanks have the EVAP system which I didnt know about, which made finding one even harder.
Next step was to go to the junkyard on the other side of town and check out the '02 they had. Turns out the stab the sh*t out of their tanks to get the gas out. this one was the only visible one until I dropped the skid and found 10 more..
So I was on the hunt again, I ended up having to order one from out of the state. Took another week to get here and one more week before I could get the time to install it. In that week I cleaned it out a few times and prepped it for the install.
Took a couple hours to install, I hate installing fuel tanks on these trucks. What was toyota thinking?!
Anywho, 3 weeks later and I had my truck back again.
Still cant stop looking at the blue.
