Ok..so now I have a reasonable puddle on the ground under the old ambulance.

I crawled under and wiped the visable drips from the tank and noticed that the fuel was seaping out of the cushioning material between the mounting bracket and the tank.

I imagine I may have some rust holes in the tank under the strap.

What is the next step?

Do I get a new tank or do I repair this one?

 

I have found if you have one rust hole another is not far behind. I usually put a different tank in as I have a few parts trucks avalable. If you choose to patch it be very carefull as they can explode if precautions are not taken.

 

JB weld it up and it should be good for a while.

 

I agree with john and farmert
throw some JB weld on it and then get your eyes peeled for a new tank
someone posted a 33gal plastic tank not long ago for the rear of our rigs that would be awesome

 

The 33 gallon tank is a Bronco tank, and the install of one is not for the faint of heart - I just went through that mess a few days ago, it's nice to have a bottomless pit of a fuel tank but man was it annoying to install it and make everything work right, fit good, and look nearly factory...

 

what was needed to fabricate Archangel?
was it the hangers you had trouble with or is it simply a tight fit between the frame rails or something?

here's the poly 33 gal that peruses was referring to:
33 Gallon Poly Plastic Gas Tank for Ford - iNeedParts.com
they have the new straps listed below.
they also have a direct fit poly tank for our trucks too.

 

Well, if you look at it from the bottom, the Bronco tank is both narrower side to side and shortehr front to back than the truck tank - side to side is nice cause it makes lifting it in place a breeze, but front to back is an issue because the truck straps and such end up being longer than needed and if not attached right the tank can slide fore-aft on them. Then there is the fact that the tank is deeper, so the only way the factory lower brackets would work is if you use long pieces of all-thread instead of bolts for them - which looks real hacked, and not very safe either. What I for all this was use new Bronco-specific upper straps (they can be stretched enough, and due to their shape they enter the tank fore-aft quite well) and then take the factory truck upper straps, extend them by about a foot, re-bend them, and use them as lower straps to keep the tank up against the uppers.

Then there is the mess with the fuel pickup assembly - it has two locating tabs, but the Bronco tank is 180 degrees off the diesel for their locations - I went around that by cutting off one of the tabs and then I was able to drop the fuel pickup in pretty close to how it should sit. The pickup tube with the shower head need to be extended to reach the bottom of the much deeper Bronco tank, my first compression fitting didn't seal right but luckily I had another one laying around and it worked good (which I attribute to the fact it was a Swadgelok fitting, and not a cheap Chinese-made fitting from Lowes like the first one). You can swap the float and its arm between the Bronco fuel level sender and truck one, however the sending unit itself sits at an angle in our trucks, and for the Bronco float to work properly it needs to sit straight upright like it does in the Broncos - I ended up bending the return line the sender is attached to for that, and then had to re-bend slightly the float arm so the float stays about an inch off the bottom of the tank when it's empty, this gives me about 6 gallons of fuel reserve once the gauge hits "E". Also keep in mind the Bronco pickup sump is in the front of the tank, while for the trucks it's in the middle, so with a Bronco tank theoretically you can air-lock the engine when you start pulling up a steep grade with little fuel in your tank (it would go to the rear of the tank, exposing the shower head to air)...

Think that about covers it.

 

ahhh! thanks.
ok,so it sounds like it's not really worth it? would you do it again or just opt for the stock tank?
the only reason i was contemplating it, would be so that when i saw fuel prices much cheaper some place,i would fill this tank.
doesn't really seem worth it though.
iv no realistic need to carry around so much extra weight all the time anyway(which would likely neglect the few cents saved per gallon anyway lol)........i think you convinced me to go with the stock size.
thanks man.appreciate it.

 

I'd got for it again, but I pull a cross-country round trip twice a year so it's nice to have the extra fuel capacity - I'll be using the rear tank as primary now, with the front one as a reserve, and have a nice healthy amount of ATF in the front tank mixed with the regular diesel (and some WMO to lose the red color) for periodic fuel system lubrication. I'll however make darn sure I got flare union instead of the compression one, I just don't trust compression fittings all that much...

 

thanks for the info I'm printing that and puttin in my folder of posible mods

if the rear tank ever rusts out I'll go that way instead of a stock replacement, but I think what I realy want to do is put one of them 110gal tanks in the bed and an extra FSV run my biodiesel outa that one

 

though I saw a guy recently that had tanks built shaped to fit in front of the fenderwells so he could still load sheet goods, they were insulated and heated so he had 40 gals of WVO on each side to give him a 600-800 mile range on veggi oil

 

I really can't lose any more bed space - I already got a big tool box, a big Igloo cooler, and a 5th wheel hitch with a spare wheel on it, in that order front to rear - essentially the only part of the bed that's useful for loading up stuff right now is the rear 1/4 of it plus whatever fits under the 5er, about the only way I can fit an external tank in there is if I stack the toolbox on top of it...

The only reason I went with the Bronco tank is that I needed a new tank and straps anyways, and since the price was about the same it was well worth the hassle to install it.