Homemade Defuel Cart

I thought I would share this just because I think it is kind of cool.  I was given the unenviable task of modernizing our avgas defueling cart.  It consisted of a cart with two fifty gallon drums and a hand pump mounted on it.  

I should have taken a "before" picture.  Too busy working I guess.

      It was a real pain to use.  It took two guys to refuel because you had to hold a filtering funnel in place and pump really slowly so that it could keep up.  The bungholes for the barrels were always open, so we would keep rags stuffed in them to keep dirt out.  There was a mesh finger screen on the pump, but the mesh was very coarse, and with fuel getting pumped both directions, it would just flush junk back and forth..   

This is what the hangar looked like when I was working on it.  Check out our two wheeled tug.  

     I decided to use PVC because galvanized pipes would have been expensive and required unions all over the place, plus it would have been very time consuming to cut everything to length and then cut and thread it as well.  

My objectives were to make this a sealed system (except for barrel venting) to keep out contaminates, to install a filter that would be bypassed when defueling but inline when refueling, hook hard lines to the two barrels on the cart, and leave an extra hose outlet for times when more than two barrels are needed.  I also stripped and painted the cart itself and rattle canned the pvc black.

My one regret to this point is that I didn't use pvc check valves for the filter bypass.  It is a ball valve setup, which is easy to forget to change, and if you don't change it will bypass the filter when you are  refueling.

 If anyone wants to save some money on a defuel cart, build one of these.  The filter body came from TSC and it really moves fuel well through the 3/4" line.

It took me almost two days from start to finish, but I accomplished all of the goals.  Much thanks to Gary, Mac, and Zane because they had most of the ideas.