Auxilliary fuel tank for a Discovery

Hi Paul,

This is a damn fine idea, I know one is done for a defender that fits in the space you are tlaking about. However, I wonder if that could be adapted for a Disco. I also have a Disco.

I drove upto Gairloch (Scotland) recently and thankfully refuelled at Inverness as it was on a Sunday and nothing was open all the way to Gairloch. We got there with a quarter of a tank of fuel towing a caravan in horrendous weather. An extra 5 gallons of fuel would have been very helpful. i know that I wont do that rek again without a jerry can full of diesel.

Andrew

On or around Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:48:23 GMT, "Paul S. Brown" enlightened us thusly:

you can buy aluminium petrol tanks from the autogas suppliers. about 8 gallons capacity, fit in the rear wing space. You might have to get onto allisport or somesuch direct for what you want, as the one I've got uses the normal filler arrangement, and so would be in the way. you'll want one with both the normal filler and a subsidiary filler to connect to the main tank, I guess. Should be do-able, but it'll be a custom build. You'll also want a low-level connection pipe into the tank, and into the main fuel tank, so as to allow the fuel to get out of the auxiliary, either that or have a switchable fuel supply and an extra feed from the aux. tank.

if you wanted one the other side as well, it'd be a problem to have a separate filler, but you could connect it with top and bottom balance pipes to the main tank, or indeed, to the other aux. tank. Balance pipes should be at least 3/4" I'd think, or it'll take ages to fill.

here's a rough layout, in ASCII_art (TM):

__ _ \ \ \ | | filler | | neck | | chassis rails -------------, | | | | | | c b v c d | d | |______________________________ | ____ |____ _____ | v | | | | ___ | | ___ | | |aux | | | | main tank | | | |aux | | 1 | | | | | | | | 2 | |____| ¯¯¯ |________________| ¯¯¯ |____| a a e e normally, c-c is a big rubber pipe. This gets shortened to connect to the filler of aux 1, you have to get an additional filler pipe stub at b on aux

1 to connect from that to the main tank. You want balance pipes at a-a, d-d and e-e. I daresay you could get the nice people at allisport to make 'em. Aux 1 is a standard tank but with additional filler stub and balance pipe connection at the bottom. Aux2 is also standard but left-handed, but that would be possible too, they'd only have to make it tother way 'round, it's the same shape, and without a filler stub but with 2 balance stubs.

Provided the whole lot are suitably vented, you could do away with the low-level balance pipes at a-a and e-e and have a switchable reserve by incorporating several-way taps in the fuel supply lines to the engine bay, this would allow the main tank to drain both aux. until they reached the level of the fillers, then empty itself, with some fuel remaining in the 2 aux., which you could then switch to. I'm not sure what this would gain you bar for the lack of low-level pipes to catch on things, but they could be suitably-protected, as they'e only at bottom-of-tank level anyway. Personally, I'd do it all as one giant supply, with balance pipes, then the fuel gauge will read the contents for you and you've not got extra taps and so on to install in the fuel lines.

The downside is that the tanks, nice though they are, retail at something over 250 notes, so I reckon you're looking at a minimum of 600 to install it. You would, however, end up with something around 35 gallons of fuel on board in proper built-in tanks.

If you want to see a tank in situ, there's one on my disco, I suppose I might be persuaded to take pictures... I think you may find Chris Perfect's site

has pictures of the tank as supplied.Note also that there's more than one kind of filler neck, you need thecorrect kind, really - mine was the wrong sort (only tank available at shortnotice) and I ended up doing several monumental mods to the pipe to get itlined up.

How about telling us in which country you live. Not much point me telling you where you can buy it in Australia if you are in Tuvalu ( I assume you are in Tuvalu from the TV country code ?? -- tv is the ISO3166 code for Tuvalu)

Although shipping to Tuvalu is easy from Oz.

Ron

Close. Aylesbury in S.E. UK IIRC...

Ahh, no worries then. Contact Long Ranger in Newcastle (Australia).....

Ron

"Tim Hobbs" wrote

Yes but in South Africa. Where are you?

The one here fits into the dead space on filler side. Fills via same filler and gravity feeds into main tank. Nearly same height as std. tank so fuel gauge drops slowly at top and at around 150 miles, drops linear. Oh, yes, they hold around 36 l, made from s/s and cost around GBP 190 fitted ;-)

I know they export to the UK so I could find out where they ship to. Have one in my 4.6 G4 Disco and love it;-). Current range around 400 miles but on my previous Td5 manged nearly 650 miles on a tank when towing.