fuel cell fabrication tips

[911industries]

Since the cell that fuel safe offers for my falcon(mustang) is about $1300 Im opting to fab my own. The actual fabricating and welding I wont have a problem with. My problem is figuring out what I features I need and how they work.

My car is set up more for road racing then drag. I made a sump in the factory tank and that doesnt work for anything but straight lines. What Im looking at is the sump fuel safe makes with check balls. However its plastic and Im wondering how well it attaches and seals to the tank.

Next Im trying to figure out how the foam situation works. Should I try to fill the tank all the way up or only about half? How much room should I leave around the sending unit?

Then any other input or advice you guys have would be great too.

[exwestracer]

I've retrofitted a couple of those sumps in vintage Can-Am cars. You really don't need to mount it to the cell, just cut and stack the foam around it so it wont move. We cut channels in the foam where the pickup ports are so they cant get blocked by the foam.

I would fill the cell with foam to the highest fuel level you think you might have. With that square design tank, it shouldn't be too hard to math it out so you have a depth per gallon of fuel. The foam is obviously going to take up some of the available space, so give it an extra inch or so. I've never dealt with a fuel level sender, but I would be sure to interlock the foam around the sweep of the sender arm so it can't slide around and block the arm.

[67 455 Bird ragtop]

Round ones like this JAZ unit don't have the foam issues like other sending units.

http://www.jazproducts.com/fuel_sendunit.html

[MCMLXIX]

One thing I read was the foam has a life span and needs to be replaced. For that reason I opted to use baffles to direct and control fuel slosh. I also bought 3 of the Fuel Safe check balls and will be building my own internal surge tank.... here is one pic and below is a link to a thread I started....

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2009/10/67TANK4-1.jpg

https://www.pro-touring.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68723

[69stang]

Making from 16ga stainless, for carbed motor
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/noimg.gif

Has a sump area behind the recess. Just got some SS mesh for debris filtering into the sump area. Also got a couple of SS pipe thread half couplers to use as fitting bungs for supply line and drain. I'm going with the foam to keep from putting extra weight in SS in it. If I ever decide to go FI I can use the oval hole for all the guts but for now it will contain a return, vent & sending unit. Undecided right now on the fill valve

[fordsbyjay]

Since the cell that fuel safe offers for my falcon(mustang) is about $1300 Im opting to fab my own. The actual fabricating and welding I wont have a problem with. My problem is figuring out what I features I need and how they work.

My car is set up more for road racing then drag. I made a sump in the factory tank and that doesnt work for anything but straight lines. What Im looking at is the sump fuel safe makes with check balls. However its plastic and Im wondering how well it attaches and seals to the tank.

Next Im trying to figure out how the foam situation works. Should I try to fill the tank all the way up or only about half? How much room should I leave around the sending unit?

Then any other input or advice you guys have would be great too.

What year of Falcon is it? One thing I didn't know when I bought my tank from Ricks is that you can put a later mustang (69 IIRC) in the earlier cars and have extra capacity because they are deeper. The reason I mention this is it might help you out dimension wise when you are trying to figure out how big to build it.