fuel tank

[Siddharth Mandal]

is advisable to use fibre reinforced plastic to manufacture a fuel tank does it react with petrol??

[Siddharth Mandal]

is advisable to use fibre reinforced plastic to manufacture a fuel tank does it react with petrol??

[KU_Racing]

depends on the plastic you are referring to, the fuel you will use, liner/no liner, etc.

[Siddharth Mandal]

it is normal fiber glass type FRP we use for body work

[Travis Garrison]

It can be done (by normal you mean polyester?). I would suggest an sloshing sealer just to be on the safe side though.

http://aircraftspruce.com/menus/ap/fuel_tanksealants.html

[Johnny C]

I am new to this whole thing but is it more normal for a team to by a fuel tank and just hide it somewhere, buy a fuel tank and retrofit it, or just build their own from the ground up? If building my own, any suggestions? Thanks.

[BStoney]

How about Aluminum, either .032 or .050 ??

I think you'll find most teams build their own, but that shouldn't stop you from pursuing what you think is best for your team.

[Biggy72]

Just remember if you make it out of steel it will be much easier to weld up, but you need to coat the inside of the tank so it doesn't rust.

[Matthew Giles]

If you start with clean steel you might not even worry about rust. Even if it did rust slightly, it's unlikely to make any differnce. Most automotive fuel tanks don't seem to be sealed on the inside, and they rust a little (or all the way through). But that usually takes 10 years. Your formula car will be lucky if it runs for 2.

[BStoney]

But keep in mind that steel is 3X the weight for the same thickness http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif Even if you go say .032" in steel, that is also easily weldable in 5052 or 6061 Al.

[Biggy72]

well we just had to toss out some injectors because it rusted enough to plug them up in three weeks running fresh 100 octane in a relatively dry climate. We didn't have a fine filter on the system but everything was screened on the pickups.

[Jersey Tom]

Unless you have some real good TIG welders and ideally an inverter machine I'd go .049 at thinnest for aluminum. Not only is the super thin stuff hard to actually weld, but since its so damn flimsy at that thickness its a real pain to fit up. Good fitup is key. And if you have any pinholes, going back and doing little patchwork in thin aluminum is pretty tricky.

Not to mention you'll have to weld on tabs of probably different thickness, and I like things in the chassis being in there fairly stout.

With regard to materials though, my order of preference would be welded sheet aluminum, welded sheet stainless, and maybe somewhere way down the line a composite tank. This is just from our experience level with composites.

[Landreneau]

we make ours our of .040" aluminum. just make sure you preheat so you dont warp the hell out of the metal

[benjo]

No one seems really keen on the FRP tank, is there any reason why? I always thought it would be good to use for shapeability.