Dropped Brass Item Inside Fuel Tank, Need To Get It Out

[Imzjustplayin]

Neighbor left a brass fitting inside of my LS400 gas tank and I'm trying to remove it. I found these pages: http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/body/rearseat.html# and http://www.lextreme.com/fp.htm. I've already removed part of the luggage covering out of the trunk and have unbolted the gas tank. I basically want to remove the gas tank in order to get at it and drain out all of the fuel. Is there anything else I should know about when working on my car? Has anyone ever removed the gas tank?

[steve2006]

Can you not just remove the fuel pump then stick your hand into the tank and recover the fitting without removing the whole tank?

I don't think leaving it in would cause any problems.

How did your neighbor manage to drop this into your tank in the first place?

[Imzjustplayin]

Can you not just remove the fuel pump then stick your hand into the tank and recover the fitting without removing the whole tank?

I don't think leaving it in would cause any problems.

How did your neighbor manage to drop this into your tank in the first place?

Stupid "gadget" he got at an autoshow, apparrently a friend of ours who I'm working on the car with too bought the device as well I suppose I could just stick my hand in there and look around with a flash light, but the whole purpose of this exercise was to remove the gas from the tank since it's old and I think bad (is yellow?). Does an LS400 have a fuel pump sock/filter of any sort or is the only fuel filter the one that runs along the chassis?

I basically was draining the tank because I think I had bad gas and people got involved when they shouldn't have. I hadn't driven the car seriously in two years and I'm only now working on it because it needs to pass a smog check. The check engine code I get is Air-fuel ratio lean malfunction which would imply that it's not getting the fuel that it needs, i.e it's being starved. I'm thinking the old fuel has gelled a bit and made it hard to pump, I heard some things about the fuel pump going bad on these cars but I figured the cheapest and easiest thing to try first is to get some new gas in it, instead I'm now doing work I had no anticipated in doing.

[jcrome04]

..why would a neighbor be putting brass fittings inside your gas tank??

What device are you talking about??

[Imzjustplayin]

..why would a neighbor be putting brass fittings inside your gas tank??

What device are you talking about??

It's this piece of crap:http://www.baproducts.com/siphon.htm

[jcrome04]

LOL wow.

[Imzjustplayin]

LOL wow.

Has anyone ever replaced the fuel pump sock? Can I pick up one of these socks at autozone or something? (I have no idea what it looks like, and google images isn't any more helpful)