How Would You Deal with a Seriously Flooded Gasoline Engine, Carb Filled to the Brim?

[sdowney717]

for example say hydrolocked with gasoline.
I know how to deal with this on a land engine.
But you cant pull the plugs and crank it over to flush out the gas.
That is bad enough on a car.

I have some good ideas involving a vacuum jar and a long flexible hose.

[skipmac]

By whatever means necessary and available get all the gas out of the carbs and cylinders. If you have to, get old rags to soak it up.

Keep all hatches open, turn off all electrical systems to avoid a spark if an automatic system starts up like water pump, bilge pump, AC compressor.

When done, leave hatches open, turn on blower, go outside and don't try to crank the engine until you can smell no gas odor.

[capngeo]

Get one of These. You can suck the fuel out without undue spillage. ALSO change the oil!

[Matt sachs]

If you plan to pull the plugs and spin the engine over remember your ignition system is still going to try and make a spark. Disconnect the primary lead to the coil (or HEI system.) to prevent this. Don't forget to drain the crank case also. You might consider turning the engine over by hand so the gas dosen't spray out.
I would pull the plugs, turn the engine over by hand 2 full revolutions, leave a fan on, hatches open and leave it for a day.

[sdowney717]

yes turn engine by hand and the vacuum pump are both good ideas.

If you crank with the starter the gas will spray out with a lot of force and go everywhere.

for the coil you cant just pull the high voltage wire, you need to disable the coil. The coil will spark over itself with no spark plug wire on the coil top.

gas will also be sitting in the intake manifold, might be a good idea to pull the carb and suck that out. turning engine should open the valves but still.

[CaptainDana]

Didn't know this was even possible. Assuming you have indeed hydrolocked a gas engine with fuel, you need to be very careful. You have a bomb and you need to defuse it. Remove sparkplugs. Suck fuel out and squirt in a tiny bit of motor oil. Then you need to disassemble the exhaust and get all fuel out or risk the destructive effects of a big explosive backfire event. Remove the carb and drain it fixing the float valve, fuel shutoff, anti-siphon or whatever it was that allowed this to occur in the first place. Drain and clean the carburetor. Finally, vacuum out the intake manifold, reassemble, start your blower motor, wait a good long interval and attempt a start.

That's how I would handle it buy I'm crazy that way.

Good Luck

[avb3]

Don't forget to change the oil, as the chance of gas draining past the rings is great.

[CaptainDana]

Originally Posted by avb3

Don't forget to change the oil, as the chance of gas draining past the rings is great.

Good catch!!! By all means! Change the oil.

[sdowney717]

This was mostly a hypothetical question as to what to do if something like that happened. There are people who will blow themselves up, injure or kill themselves doing the wrong thing.

[captain58sailin]

Cool little pump, where can you find those?

[Chief Engineer]

I had a feeling it was hypothetical....I never heard of that occuring.

That would have been a lot of gasoline