Fuel tank sight tube type

[Blueadventures]

What are peoples experience with clear hose for fuel tank contents gauge. Clear, blue or yellow. Also what is the in service life expectancy with them.  I recently bought some yellow and blue types in 1/4” I’d from aircraft spruce. I’m undecided with type to use. Thanks in advance.

[Old Koreelah]

After hearing horror stories about fuel affecting plastic tubes I half-filled a food grade vinyl tube (the stuff you get in most hardware stores) with petrol and left it in the sun for a few months. The tube discolored a little but didn’t become noticeable less flexible.

 

From memory, that’s what I used when I installed sight tubes in my tanks. It ended up being a waste of time because the fuel is almost colourless and the surface is so hard to see. I even went to a lot of trouble to import proper red plastic floats from the US to make it easier to read; one sank, the other still floats.

[APenNameAndThatA]

Fill them with fuel and see? 

[440032]

Coming up on 16 years use and probably 18 years fitted of my clear PVC hose fuel guage. It has discolored just a little, and is not as supple as when new, but I don't touch it, I don't mess with it, it has no significant bends in it, just a curve, and it's largely out of the sunlight. No plans to change it any time soon.

[Blueadventures]

The blue is a polyurethane and the yellow is a PVC.  A mate returned my phone call and said he uses the blue and it’s ok. He presses it to check it.  I’m leaning towards putting blue on one side and yellow on the other side and time may show a difference. I won’t use the clear pluse line again as it went brittle.  I bought the blue and yellow hose from aircraft spruce a couple of months ago so should it good products.  Thanks for your replies.

[cscotthendry]

Mike:
I put a strip of LEDs behind the sight tube gauge on my Nynja tank. I had a push button to light up the LEDs rather than just leave them on all the time.
That helped a lot with reading the level even when the tube started to discolor a bit. I tried the little floats but didn't have much success with them.

[Blueadventures]

53 minutes ago, cscotthendry said:

Mike:
I put a strip of LEDs behind the sight tube gauge on my Nynja tank. I had a push button to light up the LEDs rather than just leave them on all the time.
That helped a lot with reading the level even when the tube started to discolor a bit. I tried the little floats but didn't have much success with them.

Thanks Scott. What tube did you use, the blue urethane type? 

[Thruster88]

To make it easier to see the fuel level in the Thruster I put angled strips on white plastic behind the pvc tube, refraction? Changes the angle with fuel. Sight tube has to be close to plastic. Need to replace my tube as well.  

 

[Yenn]

The angled strips is an old design, use yellow and black diagonals to stand out well.

[cscotthendry]

Mike;

unfortunately I can't remember which one I used, but it wasn't blue.