Help, Can't Fill up My Gas Tank

OP, Did you ever get this sorted out?

 

I have trouble filling up my truck's gas tank as well... But that's because I'm poor.

 

This has happened on my truck multiple times. Every time it's the damn charcoal canister. Most annoying shit.

 

Charcoal canister?

 

Yup. And every time I get asked "do you put more gas in it after the pump stops?" And I say no.

 

I check my meter inside. But what is this charcoal canister you speak of

 

used to happen to me in my Outback at Shell stations. god damn that was annoying.

 

It's basically a black box that filters fuel vapor before it releases into the atmosphere. Some EPA crap. If the canister gets clogged, say, from overfilling the tank thereby flooding the charcoal with gas, or for me, for some mysterious reason, the fumes won't be able to escape and you get the problem that OP has, or that I have had multiple times. The gas can't vent so it just rises up through the fill tube and either A. makes a mess or B. makes the pump shut off prematurely and it takes 15 minutes to fill up the tank.

Nowadays I barely put the gas nozzle into the filler neck so that it vents a little through the filler tube as well as the canister. Usually only put it about halfway in. And I always set the handle at the slowest fill setting.

 

It is also called the evap cannister, but some do not think it has anything to do with fueling your truck.

It can cause fuel fill issues if it does not vent properly. Of course, you can also have a blockage caused by trash or a kinked fill hose too.

 

Have you added any fuel additives lately? Heat or the like?
I did and had the little paper gasket on the fuel additive come out of the fuel additive cap, stick on the fuel additive bottle and it ended up in the filler tube.
I had to drop the fuel tank to get to the darned thing and remove it.
I had the same super slow, pump handle shutting off, symptoms you are describing.
I could see the paper gasket in the fill tube with a flashlight but couldn't get it out from the filler hole.
good luck!

 

If you have saturated your evap canister by overfilling or whatever, won't it just eventually evaporate out?

 

I didn't read any of the post in this thread but I can't fill my tank as well. If everyone in TW would donate $1 to my gas fund I'm sure we can't fix this problem. Thanks for you support.

 

I'm pretty sure the carbon pellets would be ruined by then. It may vent out... Eventually.. But it would probably take an unreasonable amount of time

 

I'm new member here and I stumbled across this looking for and answer to a problem I'm having with my 2004 Tacoma. During a fill up the filler neck foams up and shuts the pump off about 10 to 15 times every gallon. I pulled the filler neck out and checked the filler tube and vent hose. I didn't bother to check the charcoal EVAP system because those tubes connect to the top of the filler neck and I couldn't see how they would be a problem during a fill up and the check engine light should come on if that system was a problem. I couldn't see anything wrong so I put it back together and still had the problem. Again, I took the filler neck out again and this time I took the rubber tube off the tank that connects to the bottom end of the filler neck. I took a mirror and tried to look into the tank and there is a flap type valve there that I suppose is a rollover valve (I could find no mention of it in the repair manual). It looked a little bent so I stuck a rubber vacuum hose in there to see if it would open and it was stuck. I used a screwdriver and gave it a good push and it opened up and worked freely after that. I put it all together and went to the gas station and had no problem filling the tank. My guess someone tried to steal my gas and put siphon hose in the tank and damaged that valve when removing the siphon hose. The problem is fixed and it was a damaged rollover valve inside the gas tank where the filler neck nipple is.

 

Thank you for posting your fix!

 

Dave . . . Welcome to TW. We need more people like you on this forum.

Thanx for your detailed and well-written post on your troubleshooting experience.
This is a perfect example of useful tech for all of us who are DIY wrenchers.
This is the primary reason I joined TW.

Too many of the posts on TW are just mindless chit-chat, or adding useless bling.
You even took the time to include capitalization and punctuation, which made it easy
to read and understand. Kudos