Rich and Steve tank question

[Jon G]

When you guys had your gas tanks made do they need the old tank or do you give them the measurements? I'll be pulling mine in a couple of weeks and don't know what I'll find, boats a 74' and was told tank was origional, hoses look ancient at the fill/vent were I can see them. Topped it off for the winter and four days later bilge reeked of gas, no liquid though. I pulled a couple of gallons out and it went away probably a hose or sender but if the tank is origional I want to replace it, its trying to tell me something, better now then next spring.

[Rich]

I had my tank built in RI by the guys at www.lutherswelding.com. I picked them because they were competitively priced with the shops down in Florida, plus I could pick it up and save on shipping. I took out the old tank (75 gal) and used it as a template as far as placing the fill, pickup, vent, and sender. Using AutoCAD I drafted the existing tank exactly as it was, then I stretched it out, made it as big as I could for the space below the console. This, of course, was all before I really started chopping up the boat. I am kicking my self now because I could have gotten a much larger tank in the space than the one I had fabricated (100 gal). Oh well...

The dimensions for the new tank were such that if it got screwed up at all it wasn't going to fit. I made it a point to draft everything out exactly as it should be with strict specs. I sent my drawings to Luther’s and they built exactly what I wanted.

If you are trying to get a bigger tank in there, make sure you have the right dimensions, including the little stuff like height of fill and so on. It would suck to spend $700-$800 on a new tank and find your floor panel rocking on top of the fill pipe.

If you’re interested….

I put my tank drawing (DWF File) up at http://seacraft.snetsol.com/tank/tank.dwf

To view it in your browser you will have to download the Whip viewer from AutoDesk.

ftp://adeskftp.autodesk.com/WebPub/W...lish/whip4.exe

It is a 4 MB download. Once it is finished install it then go back to the link. Right click in your browser to utilize pan and zoom functions.

BTW.. What ever happened to Steve?????

[ November 20, 2002, 12:20 PM: Message edited by: Rich ]

[John R]

I talked to Steve about the "Where is he" a little while ago, he's still in fish mode and not in boat mode yet - says he'll come back once the fishing is done...

He's over on my site as "Capesams" if you REALLY want to harass him [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

He's a helluva nice guy

[Jon G]

Thanks Rich, I just want them to make the tank the same size as original,50gal I believe, and I'm pretty sure that I will have Luthers do it its not that far. I'll check out your CAD drawings thanks for the info. I'll post again when I pull it out.