DIESEL TANK

[Guest]

I hate spending money ! the price of plastic diesel tanks is crazy. I have read somewhere that a good solid tank can be made out of fibreglass using ply as a stiffener, any advice good or bad ? or will I have to put my short arms into my deep pockets !

Ed

 

[Trevor_swfyc]

Edd,

If you have deep pockets, no doubt full of cash from your off shore oil industry generous salary. Why not treat yourself to a stainless tank go on you know you want to. Also its much safer but you know all that.
Good luck with the construction project.
Trevor

 

[gunnarsilins]

Well, on my Moody...

...from -77 both fuel and watertanks in GRP has served well.
But I think it´s no good idea to integrate them and allow the hull (now I assume you´re building in GRP) to be one of the sides. Better to make the tanks as stand-alone units and glass them into place.

 

[dickh]

They are not that expensive, try Tektanks or Vetus, certainly cheaper than stainless. SL used to do some, an Italian firm I believe but don't know who does them now.

 

[Guest]

Friend of mine made some very effective fuel tanks using fibreglass - I think he used acid resistant materials. I am sure that the materials suppliers would give advice.

PZ

 

[Peterduck]

If you have deep pockets but short arms, try putting some honey on a stick and pushing it down into your pocket to recover the funds there. When you kiss the notes goodbye, you'll have sweet taste to remember them by! You'll also have the best tanks thatyou can afford, and you''l be grateful of that when one day everything around you is turning to worms. I built my own tanks out of mild steel because I have shallow pockets. They were guillotined from the sheet and folded to shape by a local sheet metal factory, and I welded them up. The seams were tested with soapy water after I attached an air compressor to the tank. So far everything is fine. If I could have afforded it at the time I would have gone for stainless, and may well do in the future, when I'm not trying to restore the rest of the boat as well.
Peter.

 

[Guest]

I have a steel tank at present which is used to supply the parafin to my Taylor cooker. The tank is very rusty and I have researched the options to replace it. one option is to fabricate the tank in plywood then coat all surfaces with WEST epoxy. the WEST company state this perfectly feasable.

 

[vyv_cox]

Don't know how much experience you have of GRP construction, but making anything in this material is a fairly lengthy process. In the end I suspect you would end up with a tank that cost nearly as much as a commercial equivalent, after spending a lot of your valuable time and probably with an inferior product. Assuming you don't want the ply on the diesel side, how would you join the GRP? You could produce sheet GRP using ply as a flat mould, then join all the edges, then lay up strengthening ribs as appropriate. Sounds like a big job to me.

Suggest you ignore all suggestions about using carbon steel. These will inevitably rust after a few years, giving serious problems with rust flakes in your fuel system. My experience with a 10 year old tank was that flakes were large enough to block the pipework, so filters are not the answer.

My boat came with a stainless stell tank, with which I have no problems. Current production versions of the same or similar boats come with plastic tanks. This is almost certainly because they are cheaper, although they have other advantages also. Having fitted a plastic one to replace the steel one discussed above, I can only say that I thought it to be excellent. It may repay you to look for plastic tanks outside the boating industry. In the past I have bought a couple of water tanks from a motor caravan company in Kidderminster called GK. No idea if they still exist. They did custom tanks at a price and a large range of standard shapes.

 

[Paul_on_a_Nic]

Try a book called Gougeon Brothers on Boatbuilding. They are the West Epoxy people. There is a section on epoxy ply diesel tanks. You will not get better information. Re stainless tanks, a locally fabricated tank in 316 cracked, filling a Hillyards bilges with diesel. The 'engineers' concerned would not accept liability 'cos they didnt fit it. Don't you love the marine trade.