Located under cockpit - locking from starboard

Looking from locker

Locking from hatch

Tank drawing

Last year I had a fuel tank made for my late model EC Triton #680. The new tank sits directly under the cockpit like its west coast cousins but it is a little bigger than I think was the standard west coast tank. I have attached a drawing and a couple of photos of the tank in position.

The owner of Triton #158 contacted me and made a mockup to the dimensions in the drawing. The mockup fit perfectly in his boat as well so I think the tank will fit in most if not all east coast Tritons. The tricky part is getting it into place (through the galley area) so I would strongly suggest that anyone wanting to follow my example should make a mockup and ensure it fits. I know I was lucky to have built a mockup for a water tank in the V-berth area. When I tried to take the mockup out to take the welding shop I found the mockup was too big to fit through the mast beam supports. (I had a stainless steel water tank identical to the original east coast tank built instead)

Anyway, the fuel tank fits pretty snug and the bottom lies surprisingly flat on the hull. As you know, every triton is different so plan accordingly. Inside the tank are two baffles. Since this tank is rather low and wide there will be a tendency for the fuel to slosh around without any baffles. There is one filling inlet on the starboard side, angled at 45 degrees in my case but not necessary. The taped over thing in the picture through the cockpit access hole is a manual fuel guage. There is a vent line on the rear starboard corner of the tank. The outlet on the tank is on top with a tube which draws fuel from about an inch from the bottom front and middle of the tank. On the second tank that was built for #158 a fuel return fitting was added since #158 has a diesel installed instead of an Atomic Four. #158's tank also had a drain plug installed on the lower front face of the tank.

The tank is calculated to be 27 gallons in capacity. The sides could be widened by several inches if desired. I left it at two inches beyond the sides of the cockpit seats just because it seemed a good compromise to me. As the tank gets wider the capacity increase becomes less significant. The tank could also be lengthed fore and aft but again this was a compromise size since I wanted sufficient access to the rear of my engine and the cockpit drain seacocks via the access hatch. If the tank were lengthened I think you could expect another gallon of capacity for every inch added in length.

There was a misunderstanding with the welder and a bracket was added to the front face of the tank. I orginally had the idea of installing a fuel filter here but later thought better of it. The welder saw an early drawing of mine and added the bracket seen in the photo. It isn't really big enough to mount a filter but it is certainly stout enough by the look of it.

I have more photos and if anyone has any questions I will be happy to answer them.