Fuel tank fabrication project

[Modena]

I must have missed it Mike, but how does fuel get into the surge tank while the car is at 0g with all those trap doors shut?

[Aussie Mike]

Good point Ben. The doors are not a perfect seal. Just metal on metal. Enough to stop the big surges of fuel but fuel will leak past them on regular driving.

There will also be a couple of small holes near the bottom of the surge tank. This will allow the surge tank to fill when filling the tank otherwise it wont fill till the fuel level reaches the level of the trap doors. You would quite a bit of fuel in the tank to get the car started otherwise. Also when the fuel level gets low i.e below the level of the trap doors the small holes will it will allow some fuel into the surge tank. Otherwise it may be possible for the pump to drain all of the fuel out of the surge tank and run out of fuel with 5L or 10L still in the tank.

Cheers

[Rog246]

So Mike I can't see a link to order these on line yet !!
Where do we form a queue............Let me guess .......it starts in Mexico and runs up into QLD

[Philm]

Awesome welds Mike.

[stumpeater]

Love your work Mike! I recon if you costed this tank or had it made in a "shop" it would be worth a small fortune! But that applies to most of your custom built parts I guess.

[Aussie Mike]

Thanks Guys,

Many times I've thought of chucking my job in and making car parts and pieces for a living. Unfortunately at the speed I work I'd probably never make any money

Bills have got to be paid and the rat race still pays OK. Maybe it'll be part of my retirement plan. With the way the recent global financial ups and downs have been I can't afford to ever retire.

Cheers

[Aussie Mike]

Welded the surge tank and baffles in today. What a pain in the arse!!

Welding the baffles in didn't go as well as I would have liked and there was some bad language flying round the shed.

When I tried to weld them into the floor of the tank the aluminum moved around a lot. In the end I just welded the baffles on the ends and didn't attach them to the floor of the tank. Had to massage the bottom of the tank a bit to get it back into shape. Just too difficult to weld. I reckon it would have been easier to weld the baffles in before welding the end plates on. Oh well, I know for next time.

I reckon I might have to invest in a straight TIG torch. It's really difficult to weld inside a tank and get into the corners with a conventional 90 degree angled torch.

All that's left to do is weld the lid on, weld the filler neck and breathers in and weld some brackets on the sides.

Cheers

[boxhead]

So you will be ready for the Nationals?

[Aussie Mike]

Not likely at this stage David. Looks like I will be working overseas for most of September.

Cheers

[Ant]

Aussie Mike,

Nice job with the tank. I like the idea of having the pump pickup in tank nicely baffled with gates etc, instead of separate pots etc. Its good to fit a drain bung like you have, as some tanks can have a wedge of water that is hard to remove.

My tank doenst have physical baffles apart from foam as I am currently building a separate surge pot to take separate fuel and air.
The surge tank I had built had the fuel entry in the bottom and the fuel supply to my main pump in the same area, there is a small baffle over the pump supply hole, not good design. Will design a pot with entry in top and return to main tank in top, and main pump supply pickup going through top and down to bottom, I am told this is better than taking a pickup directly on the bottom due to area of tube makes it harder for air to enter. Even though there is some pump lift with a top pickup.

It would be nice to buy a surge tank but by the time you want e.g. -10 return and two -8 supply lines to tank etc. Yes we have gone a size bigger in the two commodore electric pumps that supply the small tank. I have a new Holley red as well but thought as the tank is so wide it needs two pickups under the foam.

My main pump is a simple Aeromotive SS 150gph pump feeding almost 700bhp, I see more powerful race cars with only Mallory 140 pump as main supply pump, so I am trying to keep it simple.

I did design a top hat type baffle to go in to the top of a wide shallow tank, it was three different diameter cylinders with about 25mm gap, each with a 13mm x 13mm square cut out of side at the bottom, the cylinders were positioned so the inner cylinder where the pickup is had the cutout at the front for acceleration, the middle had the cutout at the rear for braking and the outer same as inner, this solved fuel surge totally but I was only on radials and low horsepower in my first cobra.

Keep up the good work, next time I will design the pot or sump in tank.

I have had no luck uploading photos to CC at all, even reducing the quality in my camera TZ10 to as low as possible.

[OZCOBRA]

Originally Posted by Ant

I have had no luck uploading photos to CC at all, even reducing the quality in my camera TZ10 to as low as possible.

Ant,
Open Photobucket account load all pics into there and it does it all for you gives you the direct link to place in the image load bar...and picture sizing isn't a prob EVER!!

OZ...

[sambo]

Originally Posted by Ant

I have had no luck uploading photos to CC at all, even reducing the quality in my camera TZ10 to as low as possible.

Ant, so long as the original file is under 5Mb, you can use this free online tool to resize, rotate, crop, sharpen, etc. You can preview the image and the file size before saving back to your hard drive. Pretty neat if you ask me.

Web Resizer - Making Photos Faster - Optimize pictures for websites and email

Sorry for the hijack Mike!

[Aussie Mike]

Hi Ant,

Part of my motivation for making this thing was to just simplify the whole system. Originally I had a tank sourced from a Commodore with a lift pump in it that fed an external swirl pot which then fed the Bosch 044. There was lines and hoses running everywhere. With the new setup there's just one pump with an AN-8 feed to the engine and an AN-6 return to the tank and hopefully it'll perform as well or better than the external swirl pot setup without the complexity.

The 044 pump generates bugger all lift and needs a head of fuel to feed it. Hopefully having it pick up direct from the bottom of thank will be enough.

I thought about having foam baffles but for didn't want the hassle of having to replace the foam every few years . Fixed baffles are hopefully going to be a bit more practical for a road car.

Cheers

[Aussie Mike]

Originally Posted by sambo

Sorry for the hijack Mike!

No Problem Paul,

I use MS Office picture manager to crop and resize my pics to 1024x768 before uploading them to my gallery. Resizing any pic to this size will generally take the file size to less than 500K (Usually around 480K). You don't seem to loose a lot of image quality either where as resizing with MS Paint introduces a lot of blurring etc.

I think Picture manager is part of MS office. I bought the Home and Student version of office for my daughters PC and the home PC. You get a 3 licenses version of MS office for $98 from office works. If you already have office on your PC it's probably in there.

Cheers

[Modena]

I think you're on to something about the torch Mike, I remember watching Rick from OCC on TV trying to weld up the inside of chopper tanks...didn't look like much fun trying to cram your head into a tank to see what is going on!

[Ant]

Thanks guys will have a look at Photobucket, although I did get files as low as 39k .jpeg and they still didnt upload. My computer is a 8 month old Imac so it should work.

Aussie mike, I guess changing the fuel foam is a small price to pay if everything works ok, I agree with your view to keep it roadable and there is a great chance if you want to do some serious laps your system maybe perfect, and sometimes and in my case the line between road and race can get a bit blurred. Simple is better

Is it normal practise to have a -6 return line with EFI, as Aeromotive recommends a bigger return than the supply line although I am talking low pressure carburated system.

[David Hodgson]

Mike,

It doesn't look like you have a gauze pick up strainer to protect the pump. You don't think you'll need one?

[Aussie Mike]

I was worried about that David. I was thinking I might have to put an access panel in so I could fit a filter and service it. However on closer examination of the Bosch pump I found it has an internal screen filter. Cleaning it will just mean unscrewing the pump and back washing it out.

Cheers

[David Hodgson]

I was also concerned about cooling, but when I looked up the 044 I see it is an in-line pump.
I really like the way it mounts externally on the tank. Great idea Mike.

[Aussie Mike]

Originally Posted by David Hodgson

I was also concerned about cooling, but when I looked up the 044 I see it is an in-line pump.
I really like the way it mounts externally on the tank. Great idea Mike.

Heat was one of the things I was thinking about with the mount. Inline pumps rely on the flow of fuel through them to keep the motor cool (running them dry is bad for them). That heat however is transferred to the fuel and in theory the temp of the fuel leaving the pump will be higher than when entering. An in tank pump transfers it's heat directly to the fuel in the tank so the temp over all will slowly increase but in general the temp of the fuel in the line should be lower. Having the inline pump connected directly to the tank should mean the tank will act as a heat sink and keep the pump running cooler.

The other thing I was thinking is I'm going to change the way my fuel lines run. Currently fuel runs up to the fuel rails on the injectors, through them back to the regulator and then back to the tank. The engine heat going into the fuel rails will be transferred to the fuel and be taken back to the tank and progressively heat it up. The plan is to have a fuel distribution block on the firewall where the fuel comes in on the main line and then is connected to the reg and goes straight back to the tank. From the distribution block there will be a line going to each fuel rail. That way the heat will not be taken back to the tank.

I'm probably over thinking it all but what else am I going to think about, The GFC or Global warming?

Cheers