Extended range fuel tanks!?!?

Well the way I see it is a tank is a tank. An air tank is actually a pressure vessel and made of thicker metal than a normal gas tank. Hydraulic hoses are used for basically every fluid under the sun, in one form or another. They are vented, to the other tank. I tee’d into the vent going from the original tank to the filler neck. My vent hoses are regular fuel/vapor hoses and brass fittings you would buy at a parts store. It’s still a closed evap system, and my check engine light shouldn’t come on using the same vent as the other tank, as it is on the tank side of the charcoal canister. A good idea? I have no idea, but I’ve been into many many gas tanks, and the only thing that makes it a gas tank is you put gas in it. Lol, time will tell. After all of my welding on the air tanks I pressure tested the welds to 100 psi. Sprayed soapy water on them a looked for leaks. Found a few, and welded them until there were no leaks. I wouldn’t try pressure testing a factory gas tank to over 10psi, it’s not designed to be pressurized to that level. I’ve heard it all from baffles to any other reason, but every gas tank I’ve looked into that is mounted on a vehicle is an empty shell tank. Gas is free to slosh about, your gas level gauge has a device built into it called a slosh module. It basically steadies the voltage from your tanks sending unit so your fuel level needle won’t jump up and down as the gas is sloshed about inside the tank. The most dangerous portion of what I did was punching a hole into my original tank. When I say I punched a hole, I literally used a drift punch and hammer to punch a tapered hole into the sheet metal tank. This bends the metal in sort of like a bullet hole would, giving me plenty of material to thread and hold the fitting. If this technique failed, I was prepared to drop the tank, wash it out with water and weld a bung onto it with it full of water. The punch trick worked flawlessly as far as I could tell. No leaks so far... So using an air tank, and hydraulic hoses was actually overkill in my opinion, but what do I know? Lol. I thought about my earlier statement about getting rear ended and the tank being there may be dangerous, then again I over looked the fact that I’m toting a sheet metal gas can on my bumper, for Pete’s sakes! No guts, no glory, or maybe I’m just stupid! At work my coworkers and I have a saying that we use all the time, “we work on timex’s, not Rolex’s!” Haha!

 

What rear bumper is that?

 

4X Innovations
I put an ARB logo on it to match my front bumper. I love this bumper, it has a fold down cook/work table on the inside as well. Very well built item.

 

Hadn't seen that you got it built man. Looks freaking great. And made sense about the tanks what you wrote. Love that rear bumper/carrier by the way. 4x innovations makes some sweeeeet stuff

 

I’ve done a lot to my truck in the past year. I need to update my photos or start a build thread or something.

 

try a '96 F150 aux tank. I built a crossmember to tie the frame rails together behind it for the 3rd gen 4Runner application (doubles as the rear mount, per Ford) - safe as the original Ford setup. :shrug:



IIRC, the Taco framerails are the same width as the T4R

 

That’s a nice and tight fit!

 

Thanks!

 

I was showing my coworkers the tank that I built. I work in Jacksonville NC, one coworker immediately asked do you ever drive on base? I said no, he said to expect trouble if I ever go anywhere that looks underneath a vehicle entering for security reasons. Just something to think about, lol, it does look suspicious in that aspect. Oh well, I’ll cross that bridge if and when I ever get there.

 

For folks wanting to add an aux tank. This is how mine is connected. It retains all of the factory venting which makes it the only legal way to add an aux tank in CA.

 

After two tank fill ups I decided to add another vent on my tank. It’s a mechanical ball valve that is open to atmosphere only when filling the tanks. I did this to try and reduce my fill up times. It worked, but I still haven’t set a stopwatch to time the fill up. I’m estimating around ten minutes now. It clicks off and the last ten gallons are pretty slow going. No check engine light, or anything like that, so I’m satisfied for now. If it’s cold and windy that’s going to be a long ten minutes. One good thing is I now fill up once every seven days. My gas mileage has most definitely not improved, but riding 500+ miles on a tank makes it feel that way! Lol