build diary

March 18, 2006: I was supposed to be on my way to a track day, but a Colorado storm took care of that plan.
So instead I dug into the job of the fuel tank. Step 1 was to spend some time with cardboard. It looked fairly easy, but I had to consider removal as well as fuel flow and capacity. I do not want to end up with a tank that requires much disassembly to remove. After a couple of hours I had the solution and some quick calculations showed the capacity as 7.5 gallons. Excellent!

With a wave of my magic wand I transformed the cardboard models into steel. By "magic wand" I mean bandsaw, belt sander and welder of course. On the first test fit, the tank fit perfectly and I was able to install it without resorting to cheating. Hopefully that will be the case with the final unit! Once four sides were done I decided to weld up my sump. Once that was finished, I took a look and decided there was a better way. 30 seconds later, the plasma cutter had removed a big chunk of what I had. The sump is now complete and ready to be affixed to the bottom of the tank, then it's just a matter of a couple of internal baffles, the top and then sealing. POR-15 makes a gas tank restoration kit that should do the job nicely.

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