OK, I have heard enough of you brag about your long range driving abilities due to installing a RDS aux fuel tank with gravity feed to the OEM tank.

So yesterday I headed over to the not so local Northern Tool store and picked up a 45 gallon tank to mount between the bulkhead of the bed and my tool box. Today I spend a few hours unloading the trucks tool box, drilling holes to mount the tank, run the line and reinstall another tool box. I am to the point where I need to cut a section out of the fuel fill line to install the T-fill piece with the auto cut off valve. I don't want to make a mess of things when I cut the fuel line, so my question is what did you use to cut the fuel line? A razor blade/box cutter or another tool? I wouldn't want to use any kind of a saw or tool that would allow small pieces of rubber to break free and fall into the line towards the fuel tank.

Granted I have yet to attack this part of the install until I receive some advise or direction from one or more of you who have done this.

I appreciate your assistance and look forward to wrapping this project up.

While I am not at this time installing an electric on/off selector valve I do plan to do so in the future.

Thanks,

 

If its a regular rubber line you can cut it with a utility knife. On these I just bend it a bit so that the cut opens up as I go.

 

I used a snap blade utility knife, let me make the blade long so I could cut thru in easy strokes.. I had a work glove on the hand holding the hose.

(not showing pic cause it is 10 times too big)

hf here http://www.harborfreight.com/media/c...mage_22990.jpg

I used only the truck hose for the two ends of the HF fill pipe.

I put the fill fitting to the top, and as Porthole mentioned there is very little clearance. I put a piece of plastic wire sleeve over the top of the valve with a dab of RTV to hold it. least it won't chatter!
I moved the adapter back a little so that the fill fitting didn't collide with that bed flange at all.

 

You will really enjoy the RDS tank. I'm on my second tank, this one being 60 gallons. I used RDS gravity feed valve first time. This time I used Airtex pump, 12 volt shutoff switch and AutoMeter fuel gauge. Both ways work great. The RDS tanks are very nice quality and I would never go back to stock tank only system.

Enjoy your setup, and many miles of happy towing to come!!

Jim

 

I appreciate the assistance. I was giving some thought to using a PVC Pipe cutter since is uses a blade to ratchet through PVC I figured it should give a nice even cut on the hose. But, I may now just attack it with a single edge razor blade.

Now I do have one additional question, in the fill kit there are two pieces of reinforced rubber hose about 3 inches long. What purpose or design are these to be used if at all on a Ford since the kit also applies to some GM products.

Thanks once again,

 

no idea what the extra hose parts would be for. I didn't use either.
I cut just enough out of the stock hose to make the fitting fit and be able to slide the filler side up to get the fitting in.

 

You should have had a couple feet of hose to attach to the vent fitting on the tank.

 

Thank you for bringing that up, The only thing in the instructions were to remove the cap from the vent pipe on the tank, it did not say anything else. I was thinking that I needed to run a vent line from the vent on the top of the tank down to an area where it would be less likely to pick up water from rain and such.

Would this be correct?

 

The tank vent should be near the sidewall of the truck. I ran mine up and under the bed rail then let it drop down a little.

RDS told me that the vent was needed for gravity feed, as the cap did not allow enough venting.
With a pump the cap vent should be enough. They were the one to say run it up under the bed rail, out of sight.

One of my buddies gave me an idea of adding one of those old style small in-line glass fuel filters.
Thought it would be good to keep insects such as spiders from going in the hose.

 

LOL at the out of sight idea. I went with the 45 gallon tall tank that fits between my tool box and the bulkhead of the bed. The vent nozzle is on top of the tank and proudly facing towards the rear of the truck bed.

I do like the idea of the small fuel filter to keep trash from entering the tank. I was thinking of doing a zip tie and a piece of cheese cloth around the end of the hose.

Thank you for sharing,

 

Installation completed. Now all I have to do is go put a couple of gallons of fuel in the tank and check for any leaks before filling the tanks full.

I ended up running the vent tube under my tool box and thru a mounting hole into the across the bed tool box. Now it will vent without being subjected to the weather elements.

The top of the fill check valve was right up against the bottom of the bed floor, so I took a piece of aluminum bubble foil insulation and doubled it over and pushed it between the check valve and the bed floor as a cushion to keep it from banging around.

 

when I put fuel in the first time, I put some in the stock tank to make sure the clamps didn't leak.. one did, just one more turn of the clamp screw.

I put some rtv on mine to make sure it didn't blow away.. no idea how much air is in there going down the road.

 

I did install an inline fuel filter, similar to the ones on garden tractors, on the fuel line between the tank exit and T-fitting to main fuel hose leading to the tank. It gets clogged up every couple months with rust an dust particles. I would strongly urge you to place some kind of filter as well.

Just keep in mind, my aux tank gets filled and drained approx 4 times/week so my use is prob heavier than yours. You'd likely get 6 months of service from your in line filter.

 

thanks.. will get two filters.. one for the fuel, and one as the vent tube cap.
do you replace the fuel side filter on a schedule, or do you check it somehow?

 

I can tell when the filter begins to clog, it takes longer for the transfer flow trax II pump to do its thing. A clear system will pump 1 gallon every 3 minutes, I can watch the monitor and see that after 5 minutes of pumping there's only a 2 gallon swing on the gauge. If I really let it go the trax II thing will stop and give me an error message, it actually says "check filter". I usually don't let it get that bad though

This link is similar to what I use. It's just a regular filter thing that is the right size for my fuel line, I think I have 3/8" inner diameter lines.
Sears.com