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fuel storage

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bobnoffs

Well Known Member
this has been brought up many times before and i only want to ask a question ,not start a debate about regs., etc. currently i am using an auto fuel pump to pull fuel from a 55 gal drum. i have a filter on the fueling nozzle and it works well but it is slow. less than a gal. a minute. i am wondering about the manual crank type pumps that can be put on 55 gal tanks. anyone have experience with them? i see electric pumps for fuel but the ones i would afford are not for gasoline.
 
During the aftermath of Katrina, with power off for about a week, several of us on my home field used a Harbor Freight manual rotary pump to access the avgas in our community fuel farm. Never was a problem for us, but I'm not telling you you should do it. :)

Charlie
Slobovia Outernational (MS71)

(In case you're wondering, generators don' t make any more power on avgas.)
 
If you want to go to a little trouble, you could pick up 2 or 3 of the little in-tank turbine pumps & array them on a 'stalk' so they will fit in the bung hole of the drum. You'd have to extend the pickup tubes in the ones farther up the stalk, and 'T' the lines back together, but you could double or triple your flow. You can find them on ebay for $10-$15 each.

Or do the same trick with an array of knock-off cube pumps, but outside the tank.
 
You're spending a lot of money to have an airplane - just spend a few more bucks and get the correct fueling apparatus. You can justify it by looking at XX more dollars for the right pump, divided by YY dollars per gallon saved versus 100LL, time ZZ gallons per hour of operation.

When you get tired of punching buttons on the calculator, then go order the right pump.

I get it, I do - I spent the first 100 hours of my airplanes life dealing with 5-gallon jugs - but life is too short for that noise. Now I've got a 125-gallon stainless tank that I can forklift into the back of my pickup and a 15gph 12 volt DC pump. That will last me 4-5 weeks and it's easy to fill, and easy to transfer to the airplane.
 
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Back in the day, I had a 200gal tank in the back of my PU.

I used a 12v GasBoy pump with two particulate filters and a Go/No Go water filter. This set up worked great and I successfully pumped over 17,000 gallons of auto fuel into my C-180.

The pump rate was plenty fast and I never had a problem with contamination.

pump.jpg
 
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and now the rest of the story............. i have always kept my 55 gal drum on wheels in the hangar as i would much rather top off tanks under a roof that in who knows what at the pump. the 5 gal cans are a pain to keep the drum filled. i recently brought the drum home and i secured it on a small utility trailer. all of a sudden it's painless to go a couple miles down the road for a fill. i am looking at a 3.5' x 4' trailer ''kit '' for under $300 that is rated way over what i would put on it and it is small enough to slip in the hangar. i am not sure which direction i am going to go but i think i am done with the 5 gal cans. i really appreciate the input on pumps as that is the other part of the story.
 
Trailer

I mounted a 125 gallon tank on a harbor freight trailer with a 12vdc pump on it. Look on Craigslist or the like for used transfer tanks. Just clean them out real good and run the fuel through some filters. I have about $500 in my setup.
 
Can you make a rig to lift and store you 55 gallon drum above the level of your wings and let gravity do the work?

You could put it on casters, so you can move it, if needed, and rig it so a hand cranked winch lifts the drum.
 
I've *read about* people using air to transfer fuel from storage tanks, but I've never seen it done. I can think of a couple of things that would worry me about doing it.
 
the casters were handy but the real pain is always filling up the drum. if it stays on the trailer it's a breeze. gravity was a thought but you get back to a relative ''ton of work'' [dinking around]. i also have looked into air pressure but a lot more complicated and we all know what a little too much pressure can do to a flat walled tank.
 
Make sure you are in compliance with airport rules. There are many airports , public and private, that prohibit the storage of fuel outside of the plane in the hanger and they also prohibit fueling the plane inside the hanger.
 
alternative fueling apparatus

a couple of guys at Coastal in Pensacola used beer kegs out of the back of their van. tapped the keg to add a Schrader valve and used a 12 volt plug in air compressor. not sure I'd recommend it, but it worked for them for many years.
 
Been looking into this for quite awhile now.
Looking all over Craigslist and here and there.
Have settled on having a 110 gallon aluminum tank built to put under the side of my cube van. Make a door in the side of the van to access the pump and hose that would be in the box of the van. build an enclosure inside van box for hose/pump. Fill hole like factory in side of van. Vent up front of box. Fill-Rite RD series pump sitting on floor of box. Anti spill rollover valve $14.00 on vent.
Tank cost $750.00
Pump from Amazon $253.00
20 foot grounded hose Amazon $42.00
Ground reel with 50 foot line. $44.00
I'm sure I will spend a bit more when done. But hey avgas ain't cheap and the difference will be made up soon.
It could cost a lot less if you bought a used transfer tank and put it in the back of your truck.
Piece of mind and no regulations to deal with. My airport does not allow fuel storage in rental hanger.
A whole lot better cause now I can get fuel to my lawn mower at home also. Ya it'll be premium but mowers like that stuff also.
My two cents worth but I'm tired of digging lead out of spark plugs and it's proven gas engines don't need lead to last a long time.
 
Boat tank

I used a 30 gallon plastic West Marine boat tank in the bed of my pick-up. Since head pressure was about the same, I used a couple of PSI from a small 5 gallon air bottle to pressurize the tank. I bonded the tank to the truck and the plane and used a water seperating filter in the air line to avoid water contamination from the motive flow air. I ran about 7K gallons of mogas through it.

I have stored the tank for years and need the hangar cleared out. Anyone in the area of SRQ need one, drop me a note.
 
I hauled my flat sided 120 gal steel transfer tank back and forth to the gas station for years on a 5x8 utility trailer and filled the plane from it first with a rotary hand pump and later a 12v farm fuel pump - until the day I found out that the local farmers' co-op would deliver smallish quantities without a surcharge _and_ they carried what I was after: ethanol-free premium 91/93 octane mogas - for less than I had been paying for that unobtanium at the nearest filling station 20 miles away :eek: :D

A competitor's fuel tanker truck probably wouldn't be a welcome sight rolling across the tarmac at your local airport, but it works fine at a private farm strip. Except for the time he got stuck in the wet sod while I was at the office and I had to call a neighbor to come over on his tractor and pull him free last fall - still have deep ruts from that.
 
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