Little Ball Inside Fuel Tank?

Just pulled out my broken sending unit when I saw this little plastic ball floating in the bottom of the tank? It didn't look like it attached anywhere so I removed it. Does it inhibit the performance of my tank if I removed it?

Justin, I'm not sure if this applies, but if the ball is smaller than the gasoline nozzle hole on the gasoline filler tube, I might be suspicious that someone put the ball in the tank. So, when the gas level drops low enough the ball would be sucked into the gasoline intake pipe and stop your car from running. It would be an intermittent problem.

Don't know if it is physically possible, but could be a possibility.

Tom

Its not that small. Its about the size of a ping pong ball. And judging by the color of the plastic its been in there awhile

It's a check ball.... Its supposed to be in the filler neck in case of an accident. Keeps fuel from spilling out the filler neck when the car is wrong side up. It should be in a "cage" in the base of the neck as far as I know.

Mike

200OZ is correct.
It's a rollover check valve.

and it also makes it very hard to fish a tube down the filler to siphon gas from the tank.

As stated in the last several posts, it is a filler tube checkball and when it's in place you will find it impossible to use a siphon hose below 1/2 full!
That ball normally moves horizontally in it's tube, left to right, so it's really a filler-neck anti-surge device
In order to fully drain the tank before dropping it, you must pull the fill and overflow hoses off the tank fittings. Next, if you look closely, you will notice the end of a slightly smaller plastic tube sticking slightly out of the tank filler neck. You may need to grab it with pliers to pull it free (nothing will break) If the section where the ball nornally goes is broken to the point of not being able to contain the ball, then the only purpose it's gonna serve is to still somewhat minimize left surge to the filler neck on right turns.... just not as much as with the ball.
Once that ball tube is pulled from the tank, you can drop in a fuel hose hooked to a pump and suck the remaining fuel out (If you pulled the hoses with more than 1/2 tank of fuel, the top half ran out on the ground!)