[C320-list] Fuel Tank Issue

[Jeff Hare]

Interesting.  The way it worked out back when I did this was they have a design Owner's Price and a Retail Price.  To buy the stock tank, you pay the retail price, not the Design Owner's price, although I could probably have set the Retail price to whatever I wanted?.

For my 24gal custom tank design in 2015, Design Owner's Price was $325.  
The Retail Price for that tank was $420 in 2015.

At that time, Catalina Direct was charging in the $550+shipping range with 8 weeks lead time and Ezell was like in the ~$450 range with 3wk lead time, so I was quite surprised that I could have a custom tank fabricated for significantly less cost in 2 weeks vs reusing the stock design. They're all built to order, not sitting on a shelf.  But it was a lot of work to design a larger tank that would fit and was quite a few hours of removing/re-fiberglassing in new tank support fiddles that still allowed the tank to be installed/removed.

I suspect the main reason the tank costs so much these days is due to the above, but don't have any recent data to back this up.  Catalina Direct probably didn't own the design, so they would need to mark up the Retail price to make it worth handling the transaction.

In the end, a few hundred dollars was not the deciding factor.  I really wanted to get closer to the 25gal range because I wanted to be able to travel longer distances without needing to be hunting for fuel docks or carrying extra jugs which generally need to be kept out of the sun.

I wanted the center baffle in my tank.  The shape and orientation of the fuel tank naturally causes debris to be washed to the lowest point in the tank, where the tank pickup tube is and the fuel filter can keep the tank cleaned out.  The baffle doesn't add any problems that I can see with respect to that, but does have the benefit of reducing the sloshing somewhat when the tank is less than full.  

The tank bottom slopes uphill towards the stbd aft corner, where the fuel filler and the fuel pump return lines are located.  Filling a mostly empty tank tends to wash any debris downhill to the fuel pickup area and the baffle helps keep it there.  Where you get into problems is by not using your fuel.  While it's nice to sail all the time, you really need to run your engine and fuel through your whole system if you expect to keep a clean tank over time.  Just the tradeoff that needs to be made in my opinion.  

When we replaced our tank after 15years, the inside of the tank was essentially clean, but that's likely because we had to motor a few hours every time we sailed (due to where our boat was located). ...that and because we live in New England where we have "smart wind" that always knows where you're headed and blows directly FROM your destination.

-Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: C320-list <c320-list-bounces at lists.catalina320.com> On Behalf Of ROBERT MILLER
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 7:54 PM
To: David Veeneman <davidv at veeneman.com>
Cc: C320 Assn Forum <c320-list at lists.catalina320.com>
Subject: Re: [C320-list] Fuel Tank Issue

I just went through this as well and decided a new tank was the best way to go. Ordered it from Ezell, for a cost of US$545 plus shipping, which was less than Catalina Direct. The tank includes an inspection port and they added a second fuel take off for my Espar heater at no extra cost. Excellent people to deal with. 
Rob Miller 
Alchemy, #571 


From: "David Veeneman" <davidv at veeneman.com> 
To: "C320 Assn Forum" <c320-list at lists.catalina320.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 1:07:57 PM 
Subject: Re: [C320-list] Fuel Tank Issue 

Thanks for all the great advice and info. It’s a no-brainer; I’ll replace the tank. 

The critical factor for me is that the original tank has a baffle that would necessitate adding two access ports to the tank. However, the tank installation would only give me ready access to one of them. 

Dave Hupe steered me to a thread from last year that discussed the issue. Mark Cole put a new tank in Fiddler’s Green and discussed the process of installing the new tank. The thread was very helpful. 

-- 
David Veeneman 
Dana Point, CA 
SV Adelante, C320 #131