Pump for refuelling from cans?

I run my 90 on biodiesel, which I'm happy with, but filling from the plastic cans is a bit of a pain (the bio place is a 2 hour round trip away, so I get a tankful plus 125 litres in cans at a time). The main problem is spillage. Even though I'm careful, there is often a minor spillage, and I'd rather avoid this because the fuel is stored in my lockup, which is in a residential street - I'd rather not have the locals noticing spilt fuel and getting ****ed off about it.

At first, I was using a funnel with a long, angled neck, but this got too many small spills. Then I switched to a nozzle that screwed onto the can (adapted cap and some plumbing bits from B&Q). The nozzle has been fine until yesterday, when it decided to break off the cap and a cupful or two of fuel got on the ground before I managed to get the can level.

While I could make a better nozzle, this still has the second downside, which is handling the mucky cans. That's fine if I'm in the mood to get mucky, but sometimes, I just want to put fuel in and then head off to work without being grubby and smelling of biodiesel.

Some sort of electric transfer pump would seem to be the answer. Doesn't have to be the full garage nozzle job as long as it can shift fuel at a decent rate. Power options are the fag lighter socket (12V at 10A?) or a 300W mains inverter. Something that is self-priming would be better - that way, I can leave the cans in-situ near the garage door and just move the input hose from one to the other. I doubt a submersible type would fit into the cans.

Any suggestions? There are lots on eBay, starting from very cheap to too expensive, but it's hard to know if the cheapies are any good.

plant nappy, drip tray or elephant pump.Id go for the nappy.

isnt it the same price as normal diesle now? I am sure somone had a post on here about it the other day?

Haven't bought any in the last few weeks, but it was about 30p a litre cheaper when I last got it.

Drill operated pump works well and cheap enough.

redhand said:

Drill operated pump works well and cheap enough.

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Was thinking of something like that, provided I can find a drill that runs on the 300W inverter (haven't looked yet, but the last drill I bought was more like 900W). Maybe a different, lower-powered tool can be adpated...

Nomad Z said:

Was thinking of something like that, provided I can find a drill that runs on the 300W inverter (haven't looked yet, but the last drill I bought was more like 900W). Maybe a different, lower-powered tool can be adpated...

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Battery drill????

Nomad Z said:

Was thinking of something like that, provided I can find a drill that runs on the 300W inverter (haven't looked yet, but the last drill I bought was more like 900W). Maybe a different, lower-powered tool can be adpated...

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get a 18volt battery drill with 2 batteries and a charger you can plug into a cig liter in your fender. with a plastic pump for water and should pump about 2 gallons a minute

Nomad Z said:

Haven't bought any in the last few weeks, but it was about 30p a litre cheaper when I last got it.

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That makes more sense!

I bought one of these for transfering heating oil. ( paid £30 for it locally ).

Works really well.

CLARKE SUBMERSIBLE PUMP 12V FUEL or HYDRAULIC FLUID | eBay

DEl.

Many years ago I used to use Jaguar electric fuelpumps for this.

An alternative thought. Instead of a pump how about buying a tank and raising it up inside the garage. Empty your tins into the tank and have a hose from it with a tap at the other end. Let gravity do the work.

Try this hand operated syphon pump, takes a couple of minutes to do a 25 litre barrel. Depending on your wrist action. Go for the big one, the smaller style are a bit weedy.
SYPHON PUMP - 210 LITRE SIZE - Buck & Hickman.

Thanks all. The drill pump is looking like the best option. I'd rather not faff with charging batteries, so maybe a 12V drill wired to plug into the fag lighter socket is worth considering.

The alternative is to get a more powerful inverter - saw some 1200W (2KW peak) jobbies on eBay for 30 quid or so. Looks like they're Chinese sellers. Dodgy crap or cheap and cheerful?

normally better than uk stuff :doh:

Put a hook high on the wall and hook the fuel container to it then just syphon it out! Yum!

Syphon pump use mine all the time,quick,light,cheap.

A quick update. One of the things I wanted was to remove the need to handle cans when I don't want to get mucky, like just before I go to work in the morning and find I need to refuel - I might as well do the can handling when I've been out to the bio place to fill them up, and try to keep things/myself clean at other times.

So, I got a big water butt and a drill pump yesterday. The butt is a squarish-shaped 250L one and sits on the floor. It's at a nice height to be able to empty the cans into it. If it was raised to allow siphoning, it would be too high to fill from cans comfortably. I haven't tried the drill pump yet, but will soon. It's the 13-quid one from Machine Mart, which seems pretty decent - comes with a gauze filter you can add to your inlet hose, a full set of replacement seals and vanes, and a little bent rod bracket thingy that can be used to bolt it onto a board. Needs 2-3000rpm, and flow rate is claimed to be 40-50L per minute, which sounds great.

The plan is to try it with a 12V battery drill for now. I don't know what the drill's rpm is, or whether the batteries are any good - hasn't been used for a couple of years. If it works, I'll put up with cycling batteries for charging while I think up something a bit more 'installed'. If the batteries are goosed, I'll take one apart, rig up a fag lighter connector and try that.

Before I got the drill pump, I tried a small 12V submersible bilge pump that I had lying around (it was too big to go into the neck of the cans, so hadn't tried it before). The flow rate looked pitiful - it would have taken ages to pump a 50L fill.

I've been using one of the cheap ebay siphon hand pumps but i think the biodiesel is too heavy for it because it doesnt pump for long after ive stopped pumping the handle

I find that a bit odd - bio is thicker than water, but it's still pretty free-flowing.

I use one of these for biodiesel. Had it quite some time, run it off battery or jump start. Works for me. Sometimes have to jiggle it a bit these days so maybe time to buy another, but there again I reckon I have had it a long time now!
Diesel Fuel Transfer Pump 200 GPH Refueling 12v | eBay