lead pellets in tank?

[keeperlit]

Hi all,

When checking my used tank before fitting I noticed something rattling around the inside of it. I drained it and removed the valve to find it intact and what looks like a load of lead pellets in a metal gauze wrapper

I guess thing is to prevent rust in the tank or help save valve seals etc?

Planning to leave it in place unless it shouldn't be there

[Brian_H]

Its one of these

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/352203207675

Or

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spitfire-Fuel- ... B00J227QQ8

I can't personally see it doing anything useful, reading reviews on the Amazon listing seems to suggest they are little more than Snake oil. Personally I'd remove it, I can only see it causing you noises as it slides around inside the tank and possibly even getting caught on the float arm as well.

[keeperlit]

Thanks!

[CNG]

What.png (97.31 KiB) Viewed 2651 times

I'm stunned. We're in the wrong business. Some do, yet few call this out... reading the Amazon reviews, this gets a 5 Star rating. I mean, the circular logic used, I'm dumbfounded? The classic-car crowd are particularly taken in.

My fav: "No problems so far. 5 Stars."

Let me have this straight, he's stumped £26, plonked this £26 in his tank. He sees no problem.

For this, he gives a 5 Star rating?

[LPGC]

Heh, they can't and don't work.

Even if the concept was correct (which it isn't) the lead dosing would be entirely dependent on the rate of fuel used.. Leave your car stood for a few weeks while the lead supposedly slowly dissolved and get a high dosage, or refill the tank twice on a long journey and get just a tiny fraction of that dosage.

But have those lead balls got any smaller during all the time they were in your tank... No because the lead doesn't dissolve.

[CNG]

Brought up around cars and all things mechanical, I'll freely admit that only puts me by home-mechanic standards at the more able end of the ability range. Any half-awake pro will run rings round me.

It's only in the last 3-4 years that I've come to appreciate how little Joe Public grasps the simplest side to a car. And this when speaking to classic-car owners, and boy-racers. Those that make it their hobby and/or business to know more than most.

Speaking to a garage-owner I know, he has me falling-about, or in awe at the near daily stories of complete 'no-clue' owners. As I sit here, he's got an Audi there, his customer 'topped-up' with oil. And here, we mean 'to the top'. You can imagine the damage. And the bill.



He reports a large part of his living via owners not knowing, or caring about something as simple as say, tyre-pressures, this, the very basic stuff. Tell them any old nonsense, and they truly don't know. Pellets of lead in a tank... no worries. Aliens live under the sea, and 150mpg from special carburettors. Anything.

I used to think stories like this were the once-in-a-blue exception, rather than the norm. Seems we've got to a point of affluence where we simply don't need to worry. We buy another. How far have we come, when the owner with enough brains to afford the car-finance -which agreed is not much - has no need to be aware of dipsticks?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLxzm79yL6M

[Brian_H]

You can waste many hours going through that one channels back catalogue

https://www.youtube.com/c/JustRolledIn/videos

Its the brake ones that really get me - A great example as to why we have MOT tests given the state of some of the ones you see on there (brake discs or as they are called in most cases seen on there rotors with no disc material left aren't uncommon, and selotape used to reapir punctures in tyres).

[LPGC]

And besides... Lead damages catalytic convertors and lambda sensors.

There are other potions/gadgets installers have put inside LPG tanks instead of fitting a valve lube system though. None of them can really work, the concept doesn't work because there'd be no control over dosage rate... Leave fuel in a tank for a couple of weeks while (presumably) stuff is dissolving into the LPG and the dosage rate would be 14 times higher than if you only filled the tank 24 hours ago. Do a long trip during which you fill the tank and it's empty after 6 hours of driving and the dosage rate would be (at highest dosage point which would be just before the 6 hours of driving after filling an empty tank) 56 times lower than if you'd left the vehicle 14 days without using it. There would be times of even greater extremes of dosage rates, e.g. when you've just filled the tank the stuff in the tank hasn't had any time at all to dissolve into the LPG.

There are also gadgets installers have fitted into the pipe between tank and engine, if the concept works these should be better than the stuff in the tank method but still there will be fuel sat inside the gadget when the engine isn't running and the dosage rate is going to increase at a much faster rate (compared to stuff in the tank method) for the relatively small amount of fuel sat inside the gadget.