That sucks, when ever you get a chance to work on it let us know if you find anything.

 

Will do, I'll also have access to a pc down there so I can post some pics and prob do a write up

 

i have a smooth round valve cover, and yours was more flat with raised lines and letters "toyota", it looked way cooler than mine.

 

Any ideas on getting the 3 round head Phillips screws off the fuel pump mounting flange? All rusted. Tried PB blaster, vice grips, hammer. What engineer put round phillips screws on the mounting? Hmmm...Fuel pump this component will never need to be replaced. (sarcasm) Simple hex heads would have worked much better!

 

Damn that sucks lol try an impact driver?

 

Yeah cant put my finger on that tool, will have to go out and buy one...meanwhile I will just let the PB soak and do its job. Update 2 out of 3 I got out. Gotta love the PB Blaster. Still had to use vice-grips and get a little jiggly with it. Good grief the whole tank was shaking. Of course the last one is the most inaccessible. Getting dark out so I will try again tomorrow and bask in my 2 outa 3 accomplishment tonight!

 

just replace the whole dam tank... and drill the heads off the screws...

i did that once... with a car in the past.. there was to much rust in the tank for me.. so i just got a new.. tank

take a torch to the bolts and heat them up, they will come out.. drop the tank out of truck. drain all gasoline out of the tank. fill the tank with water from garden hose.. flush out the fuel tank with water..
then fill it up with water... and heat up those bolts with a plumbers torch.. they will come right out..

or just got to harbor frieght tools and get a hammer impact screw driver for about 3.99 -6.99 and take them dam screws out that way.

flushing the tank with water isnt a bad idea to get all the rust and dirt out

 

[quote=1990yota-pickup;51418494]just replace the whole dam tank... and drill the heads off the screws...

take a torch to the bolts and heat them up, they will come out.. drop the tank out of truck. drain all gasoline out of the tank....

Anybody else feel the torch idea around the gas tank is a bad idea? Not sure I feel comfortable doing that.

 

fill it water first haha i had to grind the bolts off and weld a new plate on the top and drill the holes

 

after u take the tank down drain out all the gasoline and bust out the plumbers torch and heat those old bolts up a bit and blast them with some knocker loose and they should be able to come out...

like i said fill the tank with water after you had rinsed it several times with water..

just keep a fire ext. on stand by.. i

remeber the fumes are more dangerous then a puddle of gasoline..

if your worried about being blown up, just let the tank set out in the sun for about a week so all the old gasoline evaoprates from the tank.... i dont see you having a problem at all...

just man up and do it.. just dont burn your garage. down.. i recomend you to do this out side ...

 

"just man up and do it.."
Something tells me someone said something similar to these guys:

http://ubstandard.com/detail/5580.ht...town_id=&page=

http://www.yumasun.com/news/departme...ire-burns.html

Im drilling the last one out, I cant get it with PB Blaster and a week's worth of soak and banging. Time for Plan B. The torch and dropping the tank is somewhere around Plan Z.

Hey before I take the last bolt off does anyone know where I can buy an inline fuel pressure gage I can simply tag into the fuel line between the pump and the fuel rail? Figured I could attach it to the line at the gas tank , drive around and observe fuel pressure reading before it acts up and after it acts up. Checked on parts store and they didnt have it.

 

harbor freight tools check your local cities or pick at a more expensive pressure gauge up at sears

 

Alright guys time for an update. Just before I got the drill out to take the last bolt off the FP flange I tried a bigger pair of vice grips. She came out but it took everything I had and mangled the head real good. Did I mention how I love PB Blaster. Okay so patience is critical. I took out the FP assembly and it was covered in rust. I got some sand paper and cleaned off everything and used an air hose to make sure it was all clean. I then shot air thru the 2 auxiliary lines. Not sure what they are for. One looks like it is a vent and the other goes to the bottom of the tank. The one that went to the bottom of the tank shot out some gunk in the form of a brown cloud. The FP has a pre-filter foot that sits on the bottom of the tank inside the slosh tank. I cleaned and shot some compressed air in that as well. Shot a good amount of PB Blaster in the 2 auxiliary tubes for good measure. Re-assembled and took it for a test drive.
Seemed like I had it fixed. Ran better and longer and then after 40 mins of driving guess what came back? Ok so I didnt get the pressure gage yet so I figured I would take another look today after running the tank down to near empty. The light was on for a good 20 miles. The reason I did this was the 1st time I couldnt see the slosh tank as the gas was over the top of its edges.
Once I got the FP out it was plain to see the slosh tank and the equalizer tube. Couldnt have been much more than a gallon of gas in the tank. When I took the FP out I noticed the filter foot had the finest rust colored paste I had ever seen about a 1/4 inch thick!
Ok, so BINGO I got crap in my tank! So I sat there and started jerryriggin some wire to try and poke into each end of the EQ Tube. The outside seemed pretty easy, then I went to the inside. As soon as I started poking around the fuel in the slosh tank got real cloudy. Ok clogged EQ tube. So the dreaded 3" diameter hole the Japs figured was ample enough to access the tank and insert the FP is now my biggest obstacle. I cant even fit my hand through it let alone my forearm. Either typical Japanese men have toothpicks for arms or they never designed the tank for access.
So here I am thinking like a laproscopic surgeon trying to figure out how and what I am going to use to clean out the inside of my tank thru a 3+ inch hole 12 inches from the bottom of the tank. A challenge is just up my alley cuz I wasnt going to drop the tank. Besides if I did I would still have access only thru the same hole just a bit more elbow room.
So 1st things first. Let's empty the tank. Hmmm....ol' wet vac will do the trick. As I sucked it out of the slosh tank I noticed a tiny trickle coming in from the EQ tube. Definitely clogged. Also as I got to the bottom of the tank more of that finely almost powdered rust coating the bottom. Cool I just kept sucking it all out thru the wet vac til it was bone dry. I kept all the windows open and removed the gas cap to keep fumes at bay. Good breeze otherwise I would have put in a fan. Wet vac outside sitting on ground at rear passenger side of vehicle with 8 ft hose running thru passenger back window. Very leery of any spark when turning on/off wet vac.
Now some designer felt it necessary to put 2 bends in the EQ Tube, I guess just to make life difficult for me 24 years later with a rusty gas tank. Trying to navigate around and thru these bends with anything was next to impossible. Either wire was too rigid or not rigid enough. Like trying to do a colonoscopy a foot away from the opening. At least I had 2 openings to work from. Damn 3" hole! Just another 2" larger and I could have gotten my hand down there closer to the action. So I send the wife out on a tool chase. I need long pair of hemostats (yes the scissor looking locking clamping tool doctors use to clamp off arteries and such), a snake light, a mini 90 degree battery operated drill or a miniature drain snake. Oh yeah and one of those squeeze handled flexible grabby retrievers. You know the ones with a retractable claw for grabbing things in hard to reach places.
Meanwhile I sit contemplating. This thing aint gonna beat me. Ah ha! An idea popped into my head. My secret weapon and my costliest tool I have ever had to purchase but never used. Now I finally get to use it and none to soon. A few more years and it would be worthless. Nothing beats the dexterity of an 8 year old boy's arm in tight quarters, and I just happened to have one!
I McGivered a couple wires with handles and explained the procedure to him. He was a trooper. Got in there and did the best he could with plenty of room to spare around that 3" hole for a flashlight beam so he could get an eyeball on what he was doing.
Remember I said patience was critical? Well an 8 yr old looses interest pretty fast and patience cannot be humanly achieved until after 40 & only after 1000 trial and error lessons later and then it's still hit and miss. Well he took a stab at it anyway. The whole time I was just wishin' my arms were his size.
Now this is where it really gets interesting! Secret weapon number one failed. I still had one ace up my sleeve. Wife pulls into drive with all my hardware and Home Depot McGiver supplies.
"Honey....Sweetie, my manly hands and arm wont fit into this hole would you mind seeing if your hand fits?" in my best Huckleberry Finn voice. Voila! She took the bait and her hand fit into the hole. Damn Japs beat my 8 yr old son now their messin with the boss!
Remember this is a 2 door 86 4Runner. Gettin' in and out of the back seat takes a gymnast or contortionist. I can just imagine what the neighbors were thinking! Okay wife's in the back seat, I'm in the passenger seat leaning over trying to give advice. Dangerous position to be in, I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Alright all hands on deck! PB Blaster... check. Wife and her skinny arms... check. McGivered varying lengths of wire with hook ends...check. Bag of goodies...check. LED snake light...TOO COOL!...check. Except I was too cheap to buy the drill ($80). Wire hooks not working very well and wife getting exasperated. What else did she get? Steel wire cable, 2 different sizes, each 3 ft long. Hmmm....worth a try. Spraying PB Blaster in EQ Tube and then soaking the cables 3/16" and 3/8". 3/8" cable too stiff to navigate the bends and barely fits inside the ID of the EQ tube. So 3/16" it is. Ram it, pull it out, measure penetration, PB Blast and repeat about 30 times. Not talking to wife now as she has rust all over both arms as she has had to alternate one arm to the other due to fatigue setting in. But each time she was able to gain a little until finally it popped out the other end. Then it was like flossing teeth.
Oh I forgot to mention the wife had found these flexible drain wires with a miniature bristle brush on one end she bought from the dollar store. We thought it was too good to be true. It looked like the perfect tool until she stuck it in the EQ Tube and when she went to pull it out the bristle head separated and stayed behind stuck into the gas tank side of the EQ Tube. Cheap dollar store crap! I should have known, but it looked sooo promising. Now we know why they were at the dollar store. Had I known I would have soldered the head on. So we got the cable thru but no bristle head popped out. Great! Still plugged in the tube somewhere.
So we frayed one end of the cable and flossed the tube again, hoping the frayed end would grab more area as it was pulled thru. No dice! Wife about to come unglued. Thankfully it was her who got the bristle head plugged in there and not me. Of course, I'm not touchin that subject. So I McGiver a piece of wire over the trailing end of the cable to add thickness and wrap it really tight as I don't want it to slip off while inside all the while worrying I may have added too much thickness that it may bind going thru one of the bends then we will really be in trouble. In hind sight a 4 ft cable would be best with the added wire a foot from the trailing end. That way if were to get stuck you would still have some wire sticking out the trailing end and you could pull in reverse and probably free the jam. Anyway we crossed our fingers and she inserted the cable thru and grabbed the end as it came out the other side. Moment of truth. She pulled and it passed thru and the bobbed tailed end made it around both bends and pop! out came a rust laden bristle head and a nicely reamed EQ Tube to boot!
That was the last I saw of the wife. She was outta that truck lickety split. Wooo Hooo! Light at the end of the tunnel. I ductaped a 1 inch putty knife to an aluminum hunting arrow and managed to clean off the remaining hard to reach areas of the tank using the shop vac to suck it out and the LED snake light to see all over inside the tank. Re-installed everything and it was too late to fill with gas and test drive, but I will do that tomorrow. 99.9% sure this fixes the problem. Did I mention it was pouring down rain the last half of this fiasco? Lightning and thunder, outside in the driveway!
So I have a couple questions after this intimate rendezvous with my slosh tank and EQ Tube. First, the slosh tank wall is no more than an inch or 2 tall. As long as you have more than 2 gallons of gas in the tank it will spill over the top thus negating, it appears (imho), the EQ Tube functionality. So it appears to me that a clogged EQ Tube would ONLY affect engine performance if the tank was near empty OR if climbing a good incline of a hill and say maybe an 1/8 of a tank of gas or less. Otherwise, gas spills over the slosh tank wall keeping the FP supplied with gas. So while it was true that my EQ Tube was clogged it appears the root cause of my problem was a gas tank full of sludge clogging the intake screen of the FP. Am I missing something here about the mechanics of the EQ Tube?
Secondly, what is the fuel filter's purpose if there is a screen/filter foot on the FP? It kinda seems like the FP screen will clog BEFORE the fuel filter. If you saw the fine grade of particulate that was in the bottom of the tank and clogging the FP screen you would understand what Im talking about. It was super-fine. Almost like clay or chalk. Now I guess you dont want that going thru your FP, but what does the fuel filter catch if that fine stuff cant even get into the fuel line? I know the fuel filter is more robust and probably filters out smaller particulate, unless it filters impurities from the gasoline that are even smaller? My point is I guess, that if you think you have a gummed up fuel filter, you probably have a gummed up FP screen as well, so just replacing the fuel filter doesn't necessarily eliminate fuel contamination as a root cause. Seems like the fuel filter is redundant which is good as a fail safe measure. I guess other particulate could enter the fuel between the FP and the 6-8 feet of fuel line before the fuel filter but I kinda doubt it.
I got pics I can post if anyone is interested. Not of the wife, she'd kill me, but of the rest of the operation. Glad this is over with I hope! Will validate tomorrow with a tank of gas and a long test drive. Sorry for the long read, I hope I kept it entertaining anyway.

 

Best post ever!

 

u should of flushed it out with the garden hose... thats the best way to clean it

 

thats the longest post ive read on here so far lol

 

u sure did good use out of your old lady..

 

What ever happened with this? I got the same symptoms as the OP and would love to know what he found wrong.

 

Rusty gas tank was my root problem. I was able to clean it out w/o dropping the tank. PB Blaster and patience a necessity along w/common tools (see my previous post). Fuel pump has a foot screen which kept getting clogged. No problem since!

 

Cool man. Thanks. I bought a project truck and I cleaned the tank with some rocks and shaking it real good lol and cleaned it with wd40 and a toilet brush...I think I should check it out again