KK water tank

I am assuming you have a stainless steel tank.

While not a KK I met a guy at Cooljaman who had the same problem with a stainless tank in a 2006 Camp'o'matic . He had his welded and the welder told him that stainless work hardens and cracks in this application, particularly if it was not sufficiently baffled, as it flexes from the weight of water.

I have a 1997 Camp'o'matic with a 59L HDPE tank , which coincidentally wore through on my recent Kimberley trip. It only cost $100 for a new one after 12 years.
I thought about a stainless replacement but I now think that maybe HDPE is a better material for this purpose, despite the increased possibility of water taste.
Regards Philip A

I have two HDPE 65 litre water tanks and have never noticed a plastic water taste. The only taste is from the water itself, last month I filled up at Blinman SA and while the water smelt bad it tasted OK, I decided to dump it and refill at Orroroo, now that water smelt OK but was almost undrinkable. Had to drop that and refill at Broken Hill.
Every so often I flush my water tanks out with "Milton" an anti bacterial which is mainly used for washing babies bottles etc, no after taste.

Rob

Phew!

I reckon that it took a good three minutes for the reply page to come up then. This site is really slowing down!

Back to the problem at hand. Our KK had a water tank crack exactly as you described. Got it welded at Broome, only to have it crack in a new place before we got to Derby. The guy at Derby was of the same opinion as one of the replies above - staino cracks where it flexes, because it gets brittle.

The Derby weld lasted the length of the Tanami Road but it cracked again before we got down to Chambers Pillar. We contacted Kimberley Kampers and even though the KK was almost a year out of warranty, they agreed to replace the tank under warranty. We were going to Adelaide anyway and had it done there.

I'm not sure whether KK will still replace your tank as they did with ours. The business has changed ownership since then, but ours was done for free (including labour charges) and the replacement tank was differently constructed. The folded seam was a lot wider than the original tank. The new tank was still in one piece when we sold the KK a year later.

You would have paid a lot of money for the KK and I think you have a right to expect that the design issues would have been sorted out for that kind of money. Give them a go - you never know.

Cheers

Russ

Howdy Lachie,

I have fixed a KK water tank and KK payed the bill. In my opinion the material is too thin.But they get away with it most of the time.
I'm sure the tank I repaired is still going strong we didn't even remove the tank we did it by crawling underneath.The crack was along the bottom end seam. No big deal .

Stainless steel work hardens and will not flex too many times before it cracks. From memory the grade is 304 Austenetic stainless steel which is OK for the job.
But KK had them made too thin in my opinion , you buy Stainless steel by the Kilo. LOL

Cheers Scoof . :-)