I recently replaced my vacuum petcock with an aftermarket on my '00 Heritage. While feeding the mesh filter up into the tank, the top of the cap came off inside the tank. I had a replacement filter, tried that and the same thing happened, so now my filter has an opening at the top (defeating the purpose) and I have two plastic caps in my tank. A: should I worry about them floating around in there, and B: Should I put an inline filter between the petcock and the carb to prevent anything getting through? Thanks to anyone who has any advice on this, I look forward to any and all responses. Thanks again.

Lonnie

 

I am not a fan of having items floating around in the fuel tank, but that is only me.

 

The tank is still empty I presume. Fish them out. Vacuum with a rubber tube. Never seen a screen that had a removable top piece. If they come off that easily I would look into modifying it or changing the screen.

 

Get the plastic out. It will eventually soften up enough that it will et sucked into fuel line and cause a lot of heart ache. Happened to me in diesel fuel on semi so I would think gas may do the same?

 

personally i would have taken the tank off and get rid of all the junk in the tank

 

I would be opening up the tank and getting the plastic pieces out of there. They should be compatible with gasoline and probably wouldn't cause a problem, but I wouldn't like the thought of them bouncing around in there. They don't belong in there and I would want them out. Who knows what future issues they could cause....

I would also want to know why those plastic caps fell off....? Is it a cheap petcock? Did you have to force it in (didn't really fit) or did a sloppy install damaged the petcock?

I bought a 2001 carbed Springer about 3 years ago. I had to strip the tank to deal with a peeling tank liner, and had all the pieces removed. I can't see how the sending unit would be affecting or hitting a proper petcock screen?

IMHO.... to avoid any possibility of a possible future issue. I would get the pieces out of there, and use a good quality, proper functioning petcock... When I bought my bike, it had the OEM vacuum petcock removed, replaced it with an aftermarket . It's a solid, good petcock, but I don't know the make. It's working well...

All that said....... If you get the pieces out of there (or not), and wish to use an external fuel filter instead of a properly functioning in tank petcock screen.... That should work too, as long as you have the room to run the fuel line properly with and inline filter in it.

Both my old shovel heads in the 70's & 80's were run with external inline filters. I don't remember if that was OEM or if I did it custom for some reason (that was many years ago). Between the two of them, I had 100K+ miles and no fuel issues...

Good luck with your decision and the repair...

 

Duh, yea, after posting and wandering away from computer, the thought popped into my feeble old brain. plastic parts designed for fuel tank would be impervious to gas. My bad