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MG TD TF 1500 - Inspection camera for fuel tank?

After fixing my fuel pump, I'm once again concerned, having seen a continuous stream of crud in the fuel line. My tank is one of those jobs I've been putting off. However, after reading the archives, I'm leaning towards trying the method used by Mike Houston (search on "Rusty Tank, a Friend, and the Internet").
In my searches, I found some references to the inspection cameras you can now buy at hardware stores, under $100. But I couldn't find anything by anyone who had actually tried one.
Has anyone found a camera that had a long enough neck to get around the baffles in our fuel tanks, and was the picture quality good enough to tell you much?
Sounds like a great tool to make sure you got ALL that rust out...
Geoffrey M Baker

Most of the inexpensive cameras have low resolution and seeing detail is tough.
I recommend calling a rental yard and see if they have one to rent.
G D

I bought a really cheap "boroscope" on the web for another purpose. There are many for sale for under $50 bucks as I remember. Mine was about $25. Google them. Not sure if it would fit around stuff in the tank because I never tried but if a dip stick fits it probably would. But if it got "stuck", what a mess! Get out the cutting torch!
It's on a 30' cable and has 3 led lights built in. USB's to your computer. Takes movies and stills with included software. Quality is only good for a few inches because that's what it's designed for. Biggest problem is moving it around inside a tank on a floppy cable! Mine is taped to a piece of stiff wire for that purpose. I think maneuvering it would be your biggest challenge. Good luck! Let us know if it works.
Ed
efh Haskell

Only way to get a decent idea of what's inside there is to remove tank and remove the low fuel sending unit and look in from there. Bud
Bud Krueger

As I understand it (I haven't taken the tank off yet) there is no way to see past the baffles though?...
Geoffrey M Baker

A decent bore scope would get you around the baffles, but the $50 variety couldn't be classified as decent (know any good proctologists that need some extra spending cash?). If you are continuing to get crud through the fuel lines, it is certain that you have a problem in the tank and the only way to cure that is to remove the tank and do whatever is necessary to clean it out completely. I understand that most radiator shops can clean the interior of the tanks without removing the paint along with it. After the interior is completely cleaned of any rust, the tank needs to be carefully inspected for pinholes. I dropped a very small drop light into out tank after it had been cleaned and then turned out the lights - found half a dozen holes that I soldered shut.

Whatever is done, the interior of the tank needs to be treated with some kind of rust proofing of which there are at least two methods. The first it to get a couple of quarts of some kind of sloshing compound that will coat the interior of the tank. This requires a lot of fussing around with rotating the tank in every direction and hope that the stuff gets on all the interior surfaces (you have to go by faith on this as it is impossible to see all the interior surfaces). If done carefully, this will not damage the exterior paint The other alternative is to take the tank somewhere that can do a zinc phosphate treatment. The heavy zinc phosphate coating on the tank interior is almost a fuzzy texture that will absorb and hold the oils from the fuel and is purported to be an excellent rust proofing treatment.

The down side to each method are something that I found out the hard way. The sloshing compound is formulated to resist the fuel formulation of whatever era it is produced. There is no way to guarantee that it will be resistant to the formulation of the fuel 20 years from now - I found that out when the fuel of today started dissolving the sloshing compound that I put in the tank in the 80s - effectively gluing the fuel pump valves and the carburetor needle valves shut.
The zinc phosphate treatment winds up stripping all the paint off the tank and if the tank is left in the vat too long, it will eat the brass bosses that form the tank outlet and drain ports (I had to redo the ports on our tank after having it treated).

Bottom line - you pays your money and take your chances. Cheers - Dave
D W DuBois

A good one is expensive. My son has one he used for scoping bores on aircraft engines. Has a very powerful light on the probe and a high definition camera. It prints out a chart and compares each cylinder against the other. It cost over a $1000, but he never told me how much over. Has a 5 inch screen. Shame you live so far away. PJ
Paul S Jennings

I'm going the opposite direction, Paul; I just spent a whole $20 on Amazon on a boroscope (it's just the camera and cable, you need to connect it to a computer, which I have). If it doesn't work I'm not out much. It has 5 meters of cable and a 2 megapixel camera, so it should record OK at reasonable definition.
I'll let you know how it goes!
In the meantime, I need to make my money back on the device... does anybody need a quick colonoscopy?
Geoffrey M Baker

For those reading this thread, who have not seen the fuel tank inards,, go to this link from Bud Krueger's most excellent TTALK,,,

http://www.ttalk.info/FuelTankInnards.htm

Steve
Steve Wincze

Geoff, that sounds like the same camera I was talking about. I assume you're talking about an empty gas tank. There may or may not be a protective film over the camera when it arrives to help make it water proof but I wouldn't trust it. I would experiment with it in tight places before I attempt the gas tank. The LED's have a rheostat on the USP plus that not's obvious. They run on computer's power.
You will also get a tiny (like 3") CD with the software. I was leery of putting it in my drive, but it worked fine although the written instructions are worthless and the software has some bugs. It did not "autorun" either. I had to find and run the setup.exe file on the CD myself.
If it doesn't work well you can always go into the Roto Rooter business!
Ed
efh Haskell

This thread was discussed on 27/11/2014

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