Can't put any fuel in tank

Weird problem came up suddenly. Went to fill up my car with gas today, had about 1/2 tank (I had driven 180 miles on the tank so far), and the pump clicked off immediately. Pressed it again, and probably a pint of fuel sprayed out on me and out the drain from the filler onto the ground. Tried another pump at that station, same thing. Drove to another gas station, and just took the cap off and gas was coming out on its own, past the flap thing, going down the drain hole onto the ground, probably about a cup of fuel. So I didn't even try to put gas in at that station. Very weird.

 

Drove home, took the shroud off the R/R wheel, everything looks fine with the filler neck and rubber lines. Looked around underneath the car and everything looked good, although this is hard to tell because they tend to tuck the fuel lines into inaccessible areas. So I put about 1gal in a gas can and poured that in, went right down with no issues.

 

What in the world could have happened here? I was thinking vent line plugged, but where is that thing? I couldn't even find the charcoal canister or the vent line. What should I be looking for here? Thanks for any help

It definitely sounds like your vent tube is clogged. I have seen this happen when the charcoal cannister in the evap system breaks apart and clogs the lines.

 

Search vacation pix :site:legacygt.com in Google for the fsm.

Yeah I have the FSM, I guess the canister is behind the L/R wheel shroud, I didn't take that one off yet. As I understand, there are 3 lines coming off the canister labeled "fuel", "purge", and "drain" -- is the "drain" one the one you are talking about clearing?? Or something else?

I tried to look into this a little, and found a couple things. Some people say if you try to fill up your tank slowly, it will sometimes take fuel that way.

 

Some people say the vent, like Gex says. Others say the canister is filled with fuel causing the problem.

 

This thread is kind of interesting too, might be helpful.

http://www.subaruforester.org/vbulletin/f88/car-not-filling-gas-pump-4002/index9.html

If it was me I would pull all the lines coming from the broken cannister blow them out with compressed air then put inline fuel filters to prevent the lines from clogging again. I did this on a Nissan that had the same problem. Like $6 in parts vs a $300 cannister. Worked great for that Nissan.