Fuel Tank

Had a bit of a break from the build just recently but with Xmas and the New Year out of the way I decided to tackle the fuel tank.
The first job was to mount the fuel sender. It comes as a kit and you have to adjust the length of the float arm to suit. Because the tank is divided in three sections to accomodate the internal baffles, in the section where the fuel sender sits, it's actually taller than it is long/wide so that to adjust it to read "empty" correctly, i.e with the float on the bottom of the tank, it's hits the side on the way up as it travels through an arc and will never reach the point at which it should read "full". I made a few measurements and in the end judged it by eye to be as long as possible at the full position i.e. horizontal, without touching the sides. This meant placing the float arm diagonally across the section and by positioning the float to be vertical and pointing down I figured I'd get more measurement at the bottom end when nearing empty, and sacrifice a little at the top end when the tank is full, or nearly full when the exact level is less critical. It was then a case of soldering the sender to its final length and fitting it to the tank.



This required 6 holes to be drilled around the sender opening and I opted to tap threads into the holes rather than use rivnuts.



I shamelessly stole and then developed an idea from another blog site and rather than use a muffin cup (thanks Steve) to catch the swarf inside the tank as I drilled, I used a cocktail umbrella. This was placed upside down through the opening and opened inside the tank thus catching the swarf from firstly the drilling and then the tapping of the sender fixing holes.



Seemed to work too !



It was then a case of tightning it all down with some stainless M5 buttom heads and fibre washers onto the supplied cork gasket smeared with blue hylomar gasket sealant.



The electrical connections will need a little fettling with the plastic cups cutting back and the spade connectors bending over to reduce the height and prevent fouling with other areas of the boot floor.