Old Car....using Boat Gas Tank temporarily and have Question

RTR

Well-known Member
I'm using an outboard gas tank for my old car temporarily in the trunk. Is it ok to use that tank with a primer bulb in-line along with the "modern" 12 volt electric fuel pump that is installed up by the engine on the frame rail? Just wanted to make sure there were no conflicts.
 
should be no problem as outboards have a mechanical fuelpump that pulls gas thru the primer bulb
 
No experience trying it, but I would suspect the
electric pump will collapse the primer bulb, possibly
to the point of blocking fuel flow.
 
The way folks drive today I think that is a death wish to have a gas tank in the trunk. Temporary to me would mean lawn mower gas from the gas station to home. What is wrong with the factory gas tank?
 
(quoted from post at 19:55:07 02/04/16) The way folks drive today I think that is a death wish to have a gas tank in the trunk. Temporary to me would mean lawn mower gas from the gas station to home. What is wrong with the factory gas tank?

Factory gas tank on the 1950 Chevrolet Coupe "Barn-find" is trash. This temporary tank is just so I can tinker with it to get it running and drive/move it about my property until I can decide on what I'm going to do with it. It is a straight old car but needs alot of work/restoration.

I just finished removing the manifolds and installed new freeze plugs, gaskets, and such. Cleaned out the carburetor. Cleaned out the air cleaner. Put in new points, condenser, and plugs. Also installed a new exhaust pipe & donut to the manifold (only about 3 feet for now so it gets under the car). Gonna try & start it soon and see what happens!! Was told it has a good motor.
 
That'd be a step up for one redneck kid here. He just had a gas can stuck down along side the motor in an old Ford pickup. He'd pull in,pop the hood,take the can out and fill it. Then he'd put it back in,stick a hose in it and close the hood.
 
(quoted from post at 20:04:00 02/04/16)
(quoted from post at 19:55:07 02/04/16) The way folks drive today I think that is a death wish to have a gas tank in the trunk. Temporary to me would mean lawn mower gas from the gas station to home. What is wrong with the factory gas tank?

Factory gas tank on the 1950 Chevrolet Coupe "Barn-find" is trash. This temporary tank is just so I can tinker with it to get it running and drive/move it about my property until I can decide on what I'm going to do with it. It is a straight old car but needs alot of work/restoration.

I just finished removing the manifolds and installed new freeze plugs, gaskets, and such. Cleaned out the carburetor. Cleaned out the air cleaner. Put in new points, condenser, and plugs. Also installed a new exhaust pipe & donut to the manifold (only about 3 feet for now so it gets under the car). Gonna try & start it soon and see what happens!! Was told it has a good motor.

32551.jpg
32552.jpg
 
(quoted from post at 20:05:44 02/04/16) That'd be a step up for one redneck kid here. He just had a gas can stuck down along side the motor in an old Ford pickup. He'd pull in,pop the hood,take the can out and fill it. Then he'd put it back in,stick a hose in it and close the hood.

Yeah, that is my other option, but I wanted a "no hassle" way to have gas to the motor. THis is esentially just like a normal setup. This way I can drive it around normally if I want to. Of course I'm not getting on the highway. MAYBE the side street by the house.
 
Ive had one of those marine suction squeeze bulb primers in series from tank to regular fuel pump for years and it never caused a problem sucking through or suck or draw down or anything, works fine.

John T
 
It will work just fine, we used an outboard tank all the time on our swather, it had a V4 Wisconsin. The bulb will not collapse as
long as the tank is vented normally. The outboard pumps the fuel up out of the bottom of the boat, right? As far as safety goes, I
don't think it's that dangerous, stock cars use a fuel cell that's similar.
 
Brought a 3-ton grain truck home from an auction 40 miles away, 5 miles into the trip the gungy gas that had sat in the tank for probably a decade plugged up and shut down the fuel flow.
Banged the worst of the nasty's out of the fuel filter, yanked the fuel line off the frame, blew it out and stuck it into a jerry can hanging off a logging chain on the side of the box.
As scary as it looked it kept it running the rest of the way home.
This was the least of my problems as the brake pedal went to the floor 10 miles from home, thank goodness for back roads and a good driveline park brake.
Hypothetically as long as you open the vent on the outboard tank when you run the engine it should work temporarily for testing until you get another tank.
 
That sounds like the cars in Cuba!

Forget the name of the show, something on History Chanel, about the rusted out cars they have to keep running... Hardly any of them had a gas tank. They put cans in the trunk or back seat with a hose hanging in the top. They did that for 2 reasons, the old tanks were rusted away, and with the gas in the trunk they could lock it up.
 
I set up a small engine tank (looks like from a old Briggs horizontal shaft engine) to test and fire up an old 70 F100 truck I bought until I can remove the tank and clean it out. Worked ok. I am
interested to see what I find in the behind the seat tank, as someone had taken the cap off, so no telling what might have been dropped in, aside from rain/snow, leaves, etc as it sat under a tree for years.
Hoping that the cap might have just been removed recently, but no way to know until I take the tank out and try flushing it out. Truck had been sitting for roughly 25-30 years until early January when it
fired up for me. Seems to have a good 302 engine at least.
 
Don't know why not. We ran a 12 gallon boat tank in a stock car for several years. Only we used permanent fittings and eliminated the coupler and primer bulb.
 
If you have an electric pump you really won't need the primer bulb. This system will work BUT IT MAY NOT BE ROAD LEAGAL AND CAN BE A HAZZARD.
 
Years ago my old grain truck died at the elevator, fuel pump.

I strapped a gas can to the hood and gravity fed to the carb and drove it home.

Wife followed, she alternated between being proud I got a way to get it home and how embarrassing that all looked to her.....

Paul
 
Way back in the early 80's I rode home with an old tow-truck driver, Red Barker, with a 5 gallon gas can between my legs in the passenger seat of his 1949 Chevy tow truck. We were towing my old 47 3/4 ton Dodge truck to a place I was renting. He had a hose going to the fuel pump from top of a five gallon gas can for a gas tank.
 
We always took the primer bulb off. But that was when we were using
boat tanks in those stupid demo derby cars we built years ago. We had
a bulb suck shut one time and knocked me out. That was the end of that
no bulb anymore. We mounted the tanks where back used to be.
 
The primer bulb is very handy for priming the carburetor, saves a lot of cranking! It will not suck flat if the tank is venting
properly, and if it's not venting you won't get far!
 
what year? 49-50-51? Looks like a later engine, 4 screw valve cover instead of two centered studs. Maybe you're lucky and have an inserted rod, pressure lubed engine!
 
(quoted from post at 04:09:19 02/05/16) what year? 49-50-51? Looks like a later engine, 4 screw valve cover instead of two centered studs. Maybe you're lucky and have an inserted rod, pressure lubed engine!

1950 car with 1959 235 engine.
 
Electric fuel pumps PUSH, they do not pull like the old mechanical fuel pumps that were rod driven from cam shafts. Electric fuel pumps don't last real long setup like yours is. That fuel pump needs to be moved back by the tank. I remember back in the '70's when electric fuel pumps made by Holley and others started getting popular and selling like hot cakes, many got brought back to the store as warranty issues that weren't. They were incorrectly installed up by the engines in place of the mechanical (suction) pumps instead of back at the tank where they belong...to push. As for your question about the suction bulb, in theory it won't hurt since its used to prime to the carburetor, and just like boats, once the engine is running, the unvalved bulb becomes passive. The issue might be that the bulb won't survive the output pressure of the electric fuel pump. I'd remove it to eliminate the potential problem. One problem you may have is the size of the fuel line, depending upon the size of the engine its feeding.

Good luck.

Mark
 

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