[C320-list] Fuel tank replacement

[Doug Treff]

All,

I've got a bunch of work to be done in my aft compartment this off-season. Need to remove the air conditioner to make some repairs. Also need to replace my dead refrigerator. Gonna be spending lots of quality time in there...

My boat is 24 years old. After reading a lot about others whose tanks failed at around the 20 year mark, it seems reasonable to do this job now while I have the opportunity. My concern is that if I skip it, I'll have diesel in my bilge immediately after I bolt all the other stuff back in there. I really don't want to address that rear compartment again if I can get all the difficult jobs done at once. I can't think of a better time to replace the fuel tank than when all the obstacles are removed already.

When I bought the boat, we dealt with a diesel leak that turned out to be a leaking sender unit. The problem was easy to fix but the diesel odor that resulted from the leak was difficult to clean up. The entire time I was dealing with that, I feared that the tank itself was leaking. Luckily it wasn't but I don't want to revisit that environmental mess and odor again.

What I haven't seen explained, is how does the tank fit past the rudder shaft and quadrant to come out through the access hole on the port side? Do you need to do anything to the quadrant temporarily in order to slide the tank through there? I'm guessing it may slide under the sugar scoop area of the transom to pass by the rudder shaft, but I'd rather not guess.

Thanks in advance from others who may have done this. I'm also interested in any other preventative jobs that you suggest while I'm in there. I'm apparently a glutton for punishment.  ;-)

--
Doug Treff
doug at treff.us