OK, I read some previous posts about leaky fuel tanks. This prompted me to start noticing my boat's tank a little closer. Occasionally I smelled a little diesel in the cabin from time to time. I cut a little access hole next to the tank so I could see down into the tank compartment. Guess what .. I had a very small leak. I've never had water in my tank but I do know that the previous owners did have a bad fuel problem. In any case the tank was manufactured in 79 so it had a good long life.
So I removed the tank myself without help. I took out the sending unit. Used a hose to siphon the fuel. Then I cut the bunk board out. I first cut a line about 1.5 inches from the hull. This had to be modified as I removed the tank.
All the lines and hoses needed to be disconnected. The in-take hose was a little challenge since I had to get to the clamps from inside the nav station closet. Then the aluminum holding straps had to be unfastened.
Once this was done the tank needed to to be moved aft. I did this with a combination a two ropes that I tied to the aft part of the tank and a rope that I tied to the top of the forward end of the tank. After this was accomplished I used the forward rope to raise the tank by hand as far as I could and then tied it off to the hand rail above. Then I moved aft and pulled up that end until it rested on the edge of the tank closet. Then I moved back to the forward part of the tank and pulled the rest of it out.
Now comes the tricky part. It's kinda like a rubics cube. The tank needs to be turned on it's side to pull it out over the nav station. I did this with the ropes I had that were tied to the tank. Once out it is fairly light and shoved it out the cabinway.
The whole process from start to finish doing everything that I detailed above took me about 2.5 hours.
My new tank will have a device on the vent hose called H20 out:
H2OUT Company Website -
http://www.h2out.com/I've got a local welding shop fabricating a new tank. This wasn't as bad as I thought.
After the boat next to me discharged a large amount of diesel in my marina and saw the reaction from the marina and the coast guard you really need to keep an eye on these old tanks.
UPDATE: I scraped the idea of having my local welding shop fabricate a new tank when they called me and said after inspection the entire tank looks really good except the lower corner. They said it would be easy to cut the corner out and replace with a flat piece so I told them go ahead..... They charged me $95. Not bad considering I was looking at $900 for a new fabricated tank. It took less than 45 minutes to re-install the tank after they cut the corner out.
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