My parents' '98 camry has a fuel fill problem: the fuel tank seems to have an obstruction that closes off the inlet, except for a small trickle, so it takes about twenty minutes to fill the car. On a recent visit (l live several hundred miles away), I pulled out the filler neck, thinking it had some obstruction, but it was fine. Is there a "rollover" valve in the tank that could cause this problem? If so, is it repairable, or does the whole gas tank need to be replaced? The local Toyata dealer was of little help, only saying that the whole tank needed to be replaced, but they weren't forthcoming about any valve that might be malfuntioning. If someone has experience with this problem and solved it in some other way, I'd love to hear about it. I read a similar post where the charcoal cannister was suspected, but based on what I could tell from lying under the car with the fuel filler out, there was definitely an obstruction of some kind.

 

I think you areon the right track with the canister circut being the issue. When you pump gas into the tank it displaces the air by pushing it into the canaster where the fuel vapors are recovered (condensed) and put back in the tank. If this air has no where to go it creates resistance and shuts off the pump. The pump thinks it is full when it is not.

 

Thanks for the reply. The one thing that makes me think that the cannister is not the issue is that when the tank will no longer accept gasoline, I can remove the pump nozzle and can see that the filler neck is full; there is gas at the top of the neck, and I can see it slowly drain into the tank. This seems to indicate that it's really an obstruction rather than a pressure issue. There's also no "burping" of air out of the tank as one might expect if the cannister were clogged. Your thoughts?

 

The tank should have a vent system that routes the now excess air back to the top of the filler tube of the tank. And gasoline fumes purged out with this air will be picked up by the vapor extraction system on the gas pump nozzle.

It is possible this vent tube is blocked or even the filler hose to the tank has a problem. You may need to drop the tank to determine what the problem is.

Dropping the tank is not too hard of job.

 

Thanks for this. I checked both vent tubes when I had the filler neck out of the car. The neck, and both tubes are fine. Yes, dropping the tank may be the next thing, but I'm hoping someone else's experience in this matter will save the effort and $$, since it will probably have to go to the shop for this.

 

Dropping the tank is not that hard. It is held on by 2 straps, each has 1 bolt to undo.

Pull up on the front of and remove the lower rear seat cushion to access and disconnect the fuel pump items (pump access is under a cover plate behind drivers seat).