Fuel Tank Grounding Help

[Seadog]

Do I have this right?  Run a wire from the fuel fill to the tab on the fuel

tank. Then another wire from the fuel tank tab  to the negative ground on

the battery. Is the way to do it?  Any help is appreciated.

[John Jones]

sounds right to me.  Put some kind of grease on the connections to prevent corrosion.

[hunter]

When I replaced my sending unit i connected the wire to the guage ground terminal that was connected to the battery worked fine for me.

[LilRichard]

How bout some pictures of the progress?

 

[Seadog]

Thanks for the replies guys.

In this picture I'm talking about the tab to the right of the fuel sensor.

It's not the best picture but I think you can see it.

It's a little un-nerving to hook up a wire to the battery and then to a

potential bomb like the fuel tank. Just want to make sure the hook-up is

correct.

Having trouble up-loading pix into the photo gallery but I'll try again

[LilRichard]

Grounding the tank to the battery is correct.

Where will that tank sit?  Looks pretty wide.... how many gallons?

[Seadog]

Tank will sit in this compartment under the console.  This picture shows

the 1/4" klegecell panels being glassed to the hull.  Not shown in this

picture  are the 3" wide by 2.5" tall coosa 'ribs' supports, 6 on each side,

and the 3/4" klegecell panels that fit on top.  Then added 1/4" neoprene

cushion to go against the tank.

54 gallons

[LilRichard]

Looks good- but I have one question- why did you dogleg the stringers around the tank?  Stringers should be a straight, continuous run for the length of the boat, if you subscribe to this gentleman's assessment:

http://www.yachtsurvey.com/HullFailPart1.htm

Not knocking your design, just trying to understand the concept.  Otherwise I think you have one SERIOUSLY well supported hull!

[JimCt]

Very interesting info. from that surveyor...  My 240's deck is secured to the hull with 8-32 machine screws, lock washers & nuts every 3" or so.  During the process of working on the boat I have been finding random 8-32 nuts & lockwashers  everywhere... mostly in the bilge.  When I finally discovered where they came from I found perhaps 70% of the deck/hull fastening screws were missing their nuts & washers.  Net effect being that the deck is currently attached to the hull with screws simply indexing two holes together.  Reason for this was a mystery until I read the article.

[LilRichard]

Jim- another reason to bond the cap to the hull.  I have not decided how to attack this yet, but had considered Wart's method (glassing it) or possibly using 5200 at the seam, then bolting together.

[JimCt]

To carry all this  back to the thread at hand, with the dog-leg in the stringers, I'd think it would be sound policy that the cap be secured as effectively as possible to assure good hull rigidity.  Glassing would be the ideal way to go on that score since it's a continuous bond; screws are point-to-point (stress point-to-stress point).

[Seadog]

When I started this project the first problem was how to put a 50+ gallon fuel tank under the floor and still keep the hull windows in the floor compartment in front of the console.  The original layout had twin tanks on top of the floor, stuffed under the console.

The original stringer layout wouldn't work, for an under floor tank, without taking out a major section of the central stringer.

The 'grid' stringers work great, but in my case, if the tank is under the floor, and 5' - 6' long , then the baitwell drain would be right over the tank. I wasn't crazy about that idea.  Putting the tank under the casting deck in the bow just didn't seem like a good option either.

Fortunately for me I met a guy here locally who now builds catamarans for a living. He's in his early 60's, has tons of experience, and has been a tremendous help. With his help we layed out this 'dog-legged' stringer system. We beefed up the hull substantially to handle the load and had the tank custom built by Quailty T-Tops in Tarpon Springs.

The tank is 48" wide, 34" long and shaped like a flat bottomed "V".  It's 6" deep on both  sides and 9-1/2" deep in the middle.

Now I got what I wanted: I still have the 'hull panels' forward, the tanks under the floor, and the baitwell drain isn't over the tank, and I can reach the baiwtell drain attachment easily.

I found all kinds of crap in the bilge when I started - a srewdriver, sand paper, nuts and bolts, washers and pieces of fiberglass.

[LilRichard]

Makes sense.

Can you post some more pictures of the entire layout?  I need boat porn...

 8)

[Seadog]

Been trying to post some pix but the photo gallery upload function is on

the fritz.  I'll keep tryin...

[LilRichard]

You can always drop them on a photo site like photobucket... That's what I have been doing recently.