Mounting Long Range Tanks

I mounted a centre belly tank (up and over the rear drive shaft) to the underside floor of my Troopy 75 series, its been in for several years and has not been a problem.

I had a long range tank fitted to my Triton had no problems and now have one fitted to my Pajero and touch wood have not had any problems with it.

I would run with a good brand of product and it should be OK.

I'm sure most of the manufactures would of made a few hundred for GU Patrols by now and all the bugs would be ironed out.

Cheers Scoot. :-)

You could buy a 145lt main tank for a GU which bolts in with the original bolts.

Had one in mine had a bit of a prob with the filler hose but was easily fixed.

If you drive to the conditions then you shouldnt have any problems...
Most of the horror stories told on here are due to poor driving habits...
Too fast over corrugations,,, wrong tyre pressures etc etc...
Then you will hear stories such as long range tanks failing and Cooper tyres are crap..
I have delaminated a Cooper tyre and i have also destroyed a long range tank but back then my driving habits were poor because of no idea and bad advice such as "drive over the corros at 80kmh and get up on the plane"...or "sit on 100kmh on the birdsvilletrack with 40psi in the tyres".........

Plenty will disagree, but if it wasnt for the bad advice i wouldnt have learnt so quickly....

I think that to much stress is put on these tanks. They are only thin guage steel holding 170 kilo's on some fairly lighweight brackets welded to the tank. Add to that some off road work and you have a huge chance of fatigue and failure.
On the other hand as Crackles said not many OE tanks fail. Why? Well I think I am right in saying that most if not all OE tanks are held on with straps which spreads the load and stops fatigue.

I have no basis for this except observation, however an engineer freind said that when he makes my water tank he will do straps so that it doesn't fall off so that is confirmation of my thoughts.

I've built a number of Aluminium fuel tanks for various applications and wherever possible I recommend straps as the best way to mount to a vehicle.
If straps aren't possible then I will weld compensation plates to the tank shell then weld any brackets to that compensation plate. In the event of a weld failure it will only break on the plate and not tear the tank shell.
Regards Andrew.

I had a number of problems with the original tank in the old pajero, would crack on the folds in the light guage metal, and only only on corrugations when the tank was more than 3/4 full. The bootm of the tank must have flexing too much.

Put in a long range tank (cheaper replacement than a genuine tank), and it has done over 500,000k no problems.

It uses the original bolts, set out as a three mount system.
I would be wary of a 4 mount system since body flex would be transmitted to the tank, and it is usually the mounts or the area around the mounts that crack.

Was also running a 70l auxilary tank without any problems, for a total capacity of 210l.

I have an L.R.A. Auxillary tank in my GQ which snapped both rear mounting bolts on the Kalumbaru Road.The tank sagged down towards the rear and was only 4 inches from the road.These were only 8mm bolts.

Thanks to all who have replied.

From your replies and other reading it seems that you can get quite a bit of variation in manufacture quality with these long range tanks. Some people report they have no trouble yet others with the same tank have no end of problems.

Makes it hard to cough up the $$$ being charged for a tank that could let you down just when you need it the most.

I work in manufacturing and understand they every process has variation, particularly steel fabrication, why then design your product with fixed rigid mounts and no means of compensating for minor differences or misalignments in the tank or chassis ?

For example, on the GU sub-tank I saw there are two mounts at one end that are welded to the wall of the tank. The right angle bracket will transfer the force from the weight of the tank to a pulling force trying to tear the end of the bracket off the wall. Given that the brackets are almost opposite why not run a strap under that end of tank, it might cost a few cents more but would remove all the force off the wall of the tank, improving its reliability.

If anybody reading this works for one of these tank manufacturers please treat this as constructive discussion and a chance to use these people's experience to improve your product design, I would love to hear your point of view.