Long range poly tanks
Submitted: Wednesday, Feb 24, 2021 at 19:26
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Lachie
I am looking at a installing a long range tank on a ford
ranger. Weight varies from 50kg for LRA, 42kg for Brown Davis to 20kg for the poly Brown Davis and ARB one.
For people that have the long range poly ones do you notice any disturbing sloshing of fuel as the level drops as there is no baffles?
Interesting for the Brown Davis steel one they say 150Lt but 140Lt usable.
ARB 140Lt is usable so therefore it must be the same size tank ?
Reply By: Frank P (NSW) - Wednesday, Feb 24, 2021 at 20:47
Wednesday, Feb 24, 2021 at 20:47
I have a brown Davis steel tank in my BT50. I chose that over the poly tanks because the poly tanks don't have a swirl pot. BD steel tanks do.
A swirl pot provides a mini reservoir at the fuel pickup point. With a low fuel load the swirl pot allows an amount of fuel at the pick-up point even if the angle of the tank sends the fuel way down the back or elsewhere. How much, I don't know. A litre or maybe half? But enough to keep the engine going for a while in all but the most extreme situations.
I like to drive tracks, many of them steep, like in the VHC. If you have a low fuel load and you're on a steep, difficult section of track for some time, as in a recovery or some such, then without a swirl pot your engine could starve as the fuel drains away from the pickup due to the slope.
OTOH, poly tanks are lighter, perhaps more tolerant of
rock strikes and scrapes.
I doubt that unbaffled sloshing would be perceptible in a
Ranger, given that the OEM tanks are poly with no baffles and therefore pass Ford's no doubt stringent QA standards. ;-)
Cheers
AnswerID:
635201
Reply By: Peter_n_Margaret - Thursday, Feb 25, 2021 at 10:09
Thursday, Feb 25, 2021 at 10:09
I have DIY HDPE
roto moulded plastic diesel tanks in the OKA that are now 16 years old. Bullet proof.
I am now in the process of making 2 more tanks for a new OKA motorhome project. I had the first samples moulded recently. They are nominally 200L . I will mount one each side, one for diesel and another for water. One of the features of
roto moulding is that the wall section can be anything you choose. You could have 4 tanks all moulded the same day and each could have a different wall thickness. They could also be different colours if that turned you on :)

200L HDPE tank
The weight of these tanks including all of the metal mounting components will be a tad less than the 105L OEM tank it replaces.
The mould to make a simple rotomould tank is easily fabricated from 2mm cold rolled steel in 2 pieces, something that many people can do at
home with the help of the local sheet metal worker down the road to do the bending.

200L tank mould - top half
This is the mould for the second tank, currently at the moulder.

Mould for 140L tank
Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome
AnswerID:
635212