I've got some fuel jugs that have sat outside for a while and I'd like to get them back into service. What methods do we like for cleaning contamination/foreign material out of jugs without potentially contaminating them for future use? I'm thinking maybe just soap and water with a good rinse and long air dry and maybe a partial first fill that goes into the already nearly full truck before they get used for mission-critical stuff?
What's your solution?
On the one occasion I actually cleaned one I used brake clean to rinse it and then let it air dry.
Soap and water. Rinse well. Then spray out with alcohol, brake cleaner, or starting fluid to displace the water.
Soap and water on the outside, dawn and water inside, followed by either carb and throttle body cleaner or brake cleaner. Then the first gallon of gasoline into it gets swished around every time I remember for a day or so, and used in the lawn mower.
Never had a problem doing it that way.
I usually fill mine with a little diesel, give it a good shake, and pour that diesel into my parts washer.
What sort of contamination is in them, anyway? I basically only ever have the caps off mine when I'm either filling them or the car, so I generally figure they aren't any dirtier inside than the car's fuel tank is.
That said, I did replace all of my jugs last year. I have six, they were 4 or 5 years old and I had two of them start leaking a few months apart. That was enough of a hassle that I decided I didn't want to risk the others.
Old ones get used for waste oil, then they eventually get thrown out.
I had one five year old jug crack and start to leak everywhere, after that I treat them as consumables. They're not THAT expensive.
I use a strong solvent or cleaning agent like... gasoline. Fill it about 1/4 full, slosh it around, then pour it into the riding mower, or start a fire with it.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:I had one five year old jug crack and start to leak everywhere, after that I treat them as consumables. They're not THAT expensive.
Glad to see it's not just me. Just had two of them do that...one in the passenger seat of the Miata.
"hmmm...what's that smell?"
I wonder if the cracking incident was because I tend to stick the jug on the tire trailer, not really restrained down but just sort of constrained between two stacks of tires and the gear box, and it may bounce a lot.
When it cracked, it was in the sun and was trying to expand. That overstressed the already weakened bottom edges and then I noticed after morning runs that my trailer was wet and the jug was sunken in instead of pooched out.
Jugs that stay in the garage seem to last a long time. So, the trailer jug only is used for three or so seasons, then gets retired to waste oil duty, and gets thrown out when I'm sick of my jug collection and need to thin the herd.
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