On or around Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:48:23 GMT, "Paul S. Brown"
<
[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:
>Does anybody sell these?
>
>I was thinking about something that maybe mounted in the dead space in the
>rear wings - not looking for anything major, but maybe two tanks (one each
>side) with transfer pumps to give my Disco a bit more range than the
>current 3-400 miles it has.
>
>I'm planning on some long trekking, but I don't particularly like the idea
>of carrying lots of fuel up high (jerry cans on the roofrack) and I don't
>want to lose any internal space.
you can buy aluminium petrol tanks from the autogas suppliers. about 8
gallons capacity, fit in the rear wing space. You might have to get onto
allisport or somesuch direct for what you want, as the one I've got uses the
normal filler arrangement, and so would be in the way. you'll want one with
both the normal filler and a subsidiary filler to connect to the main tank,
I guess. Should be do-able, but it'll be a custom build. You'll also want
a low-level connection pipe into the tank, and into the main fuel tank, so
as to allow the fuel to get out of the auxiliary, either that or have a
switchable fuel supply and an extra feed from the aux. tank.
if you wanted one the other side as well, it'd be a problem to have a
separate filler, but you could connect it with top and bottom balance pipes
to the main tank, or indeed, to the other aux. tank. Balance pipes should
be at least 3/4" I'd think, or it'll take ages to fill.
here's a rough layout, in ASCII_art (TM):
__
_ \
\ \
| |
filler | |
neck | | chassis rails -------------,
| | | |
| | c b v c d | d
| |______________________________ | ____
|____ _____ | v | |
| | ___ | | ___ | |
|aux | | | | main tank | | | |aux |
| 1 | | | | | | | | 2 |
|____| ¯¯¯ |________________| ¯¯¯ |____|
a a e e
normally, c-c is a big rubber pipe. This gets shortened to connect to the
filler of aux 1, you have to get an additional filler pipe stub at b on aux
1 to connect from that to the main tank. You want balance pipes at a-a, d-d
and e-e.
I daresay you could get the nice people at allisport to make 'em. Aux 1 is
a standard tank but with additional filler stub and balance pipe connection
at the bottom. Aux2 is also standard but left-handed, but that would be
possible too, they'd only have to make it tother way 'round, it's the same
shape, and without a filler stub but with 2 balance stubs.
Provided the whole lot are suitably vented, you could do away with the
low-level balance pipes at a-a and e-e and have a switchable reserve by
incorporating several-way taps in the fuel supply lines to the engine bay,
this would allow the main tank to drain both aux. until they reached the
level of the fillers, then empty itself, with some fuel remaining in the 2
aux., which you could then switch to. I'm not sure what this would gain you
bar for the lack of low-level pipes to catch on things, but they could be
suitably-protected, as they'e only at bottom-of-tank level anyway.
Personally, I'd do it all as one giant supply, with balance pipes, then the
fuel gauge will read the contents for you and you've not got extra taps and
so on to install in the fuel lines.
The downside is that the tanks, nice though they are, retail at something
over 250 notes, so I reckon you're looking at a minimum of 600 to install
it. You would, however, end up with something around 35 gallons of fuel on
board in proper built-in tanks.
If you want to see a tank in situ, there's one on my disco, I suppose I
might be persuaded to take pictures... I think you may find Chris Perfect's
site (
http://www.chirsperfect.com) has pictures of the tank as supplied.
Note also that there's more than one kind of filler neck, you need the
correct kind, really - mine was the wrong sort (only tank available at short
notice) and I ended up doing several monumental mods to the pipe to get it
lined up.
--
Austin Shackles.
www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
"There are three sorts of people in the world - those who can count,
and those who can't" (Anon)
