Fuel cell

[John Lieberman]

Just out of curiosity, have any of you ever removed the fuel tank from a Mk1 or Mk2 Mini and installed a fuel cell to replace it in the middle of the boot?  I'm getting ready to do that now with my '65 autocross car and I'm having a devil of a time trying to figure out how to effectively mount it.  It's only a 4-gallon RCI cell, made down the road in Tyler, so it doesn't take up much space.  BUT, for the life of me, I can't come up with an effective support structure to which I can mount it because the boot floor is so uneven.  Any ideas?

[BritBits]

Hi John,

Short of cutting the floor, here's a couple of ideas I can think of off the top of my head...

1)   Level the area the tank will go with bondo

2)  get a piece of aluminum sheet metal the size of the tank, and build supports under it out of bondo or wood to contact the boot floor.

If you've figured it out already, let us know!


Cheers,

Jim

[John Lieberman]

Thanks, Jim.  That's kind of along the lines of what I've been thinking.  I want to cut a 1/4-inch-thick metal disk to fit in the bottom of the spare tire well and another just like it, with the rear portion cut off to accommodate the subframe, that would fit under the spare tire well.  Then I want to built a frame out of 2" or 3" square tubing to go on top of the upper disk and the two straps for the fuel cell would attach to the top of that frame.

[BritBits]

so I guess have  bolts between the two flat pieces through the floor, and use pieces of pipe or nuts on the bolt (allthread??) to act as standoffs between the trunk floor and the upper panel?   Or even stacks of washers, glued together to make it easier to assemble.

Sounds like an interesting challenge.


Cheers,

Jim

[John Lieberman]

Actually, Jim, that's what the square-tube frame will do.  Yes, I do plan to bolt the upper and lower disks together through the boot floor.  The square-tube frame would be welded to the top of the upper disk and the fuel cell would attach to the top of that frame with mounting straps.  The two outputs from the bottom of the fuel cell would be joined together with a Y-fitting and the hose would be routed through a grommeted hole in the side of the spare tire well to the filter and pump.  I just have to get the fuel cell up high enough to get a good gravity feed to the filter and pump.  If I can't get it up high enough with a single layer of square tubing, I may have to add a second layer on top of that. But, since I can't weld, I'm going to have to pay somebody to do it for me.