August 19, 2007  -  Well, it's been a month since I got to spend a day in the shop, mainly because I've been busy around the house helping out with the new baby. I'll tell you...it's a real madhouse around here these days!

If you've been keeping up with the progress, a while back I'd decided to use a late-'70s Super Camper Special fuel tank on the choptop. I did some minor mods to the frame to accept it, mainly moving one of the rear crossmembers forward a little for clearance. However, since this tank is so tall, I was going to have to cut a hole in the bed and have the tank poke up through the bed floor...something I really didn't want to do, but was going to have to. I was planning on just installing a tonneau cover to hide it all. However, I hadn't gotten around to actually cutting it out yet....thank goodness.

I was going to get started cutting that hole in the bed floor today...but the more I looked at it, the more I was convinced that I should look at other fuel tank alternatives. The criteria was that the tank would have to fit completely below the top edge of the bed and easy to fill...and it had to be done with parts I had in the shop. (The SCS tank needed a sending unit.) I considered mounting the SCS tank up on top of the bed floor, but it's height would've put it really close to the top of the bed, which would've made a filler tube hard to fabricate and still keep it below the top of the bed (to clear the tonneau cover). Then I got to looking at the regular in-cab fuel tank...and after doing a little thinking on that, I decided to go this route.

I've had a nice rust-free tank sitting in the attic of my shop for several years now. So I dug it out and set it up into the bed. Fig. 01 is a shot of the tank sitting about about where it would need to go.

I decided to mount it opposite of the way it would mount in the cab...that is, with the fill tube on the right side, since fabbing some mounting brackets would be a lot simpler. While it was sitting here, I was trying to visualize how to set up the fill tube, to keep it below the top edge of the bed. After some thought, it occurred to me that I could simply shorten the stock filler tube and trim down the hose...and it would still fit, though it would be tight. I'd also have to slide the tank as far to the left in the bed as possible. So I first trimmed up the fill tube as short as it would go Fig. 02) and still allow enough room to slide the hose over it and secure it with a hose clamp (Fig. 03).

I then cut down the tank's filler neck down to about 1/2" , trimmed up a stock hose, put it all back together and then attached it to the tank, to check for right-side clearance. I just wanted to make sure there would be enough room to get a gas pump nozzle into it...though it will be tight, I don't think I'd have any problems.

So I then got started fabbing up the upper mounting brackets. To keep the top of the tank parallel to the bed floor and the back of the tank parallel to the front bed panel, the bottom of the tank was going to have to kick out a few inches...just like it's mounted in the cab. However, this meant the upper tank mounting flange wasn't going to be straight up-and-down. I'd have to cut some flat steel and slightly bend it to work. I got lucky though...I had a cover from a piece of heavy machinery that already had the perfect bend in it, so I simply had to cut the brackets out to incorporate this slight angle (Fig. 04).

To mount the brackets to the tank, I decided that using a J-nut would work best to allow future removal for whatever reasons. So I drilled a hole in each bracket and clipped a J-nut on each one (Fig. 05).

Then I set the tank back into the bed to contemplate my next step, which would be drilling the upper mounting holes in the brackets and front bed rail (Fig. 06).

However, as I was sitting back admiring my handiwork, I noticed that the tank was hitting the stake pocket on the left side (Fig. 07), and wasn't allowing the tank to set all the way to the left.

Since the filler neck clearance was really tight on the right side, I decided I needed to get this slid over as far as possible, meaning I'd have to trim the stake pocket for clearance. I didn't want to cut the pocket completely out, since I have plans for them in the future. I decided that I could just trim it up a bit for clearance without sacrificing it's structural integrity much. Fig. 08 is a shot after trimming it and trial-fitting the tank again.

OK, the tank was setting as good as it was going to get. All that was left was to drill the mounting holes in the brackets and bolt the tank down. I marked and drilled the holes in the brackets, and then bolted them to the upper front bedrail (Fig. 09).

All I had left to do was the lower mounts. I'd decided to just use the factory in-cab tank mounts, which double as the rear cab mount plates. All I had to do was mark and drill one hole for each plate on each side and bolt them down to the bed floor, shown in Fig. 10...and then bolt the tank in for the final time (Fig. 11).

It's now very solid and fits below the top of the bed, so it'll be completely hidden once the tonneau cover is installed. Whenever I need to fill up, I simply have to lift that corner of the tonneau.

Fig. 02

Fig. 03

Fig. 04

Fig. 05

Fig. 06

Fig. 07

Fig. 08

Fig. 09

Fig. 10

So...once again I'm sitting back admiring my handiwork, and trying to figure out how to incorporate a tonneau that would lift from the rear to allow access to the rear of the bed, AND still enable me to just lift the right-front corner to fill the tank as needed. I must have run about a hundred different tonneau cover designs in my mind....when my eyes wander over to the back of the shop. I've had a an add-on toolbox sitting back there for several years. This is a shorter one that goes down the side of the box and is sized to fit a truck that also has a front-mounted crossbed toolbox. Just out of curiosity I grabbed the tape measure and was very pleased to find that it was exactly as long as the box is wide! In other words, I could use this as a small cross-bed toolbox. The fact that this is notched to set up on top of the bedrail meant if I were to mount it backwards, the notch JUST might clear the fuel tank....so I heaved it up into the back of the truck for a trial fit and to see what it would look like (Fig. 12 and 13).

While it does fit perfectly snug from side-to-side, the notch still hit the tank...but it could work. I'd have to rework the toolbox floor to extend the front notch by a couple inches. Yeah, it looks like crap right now, but it's heavy steel, so it can be sandblasted and painted. And when I rework the toolbox floor to clear the tank, I could set it up on the right side to have a flat shelf that I could then extend the fuel tank's filler nozzle up through for easier filling. It would also be very easy to flip the lid around so that it would open to the front instead of the rear, and since the lid locks, this would essentially be a large locking gas cap...with a little room left over for storage! I could just run the tonneau cover up to the rear of the toolbox, so to fill up the fuel tank I'd simply have to unlock the toolbox lid and flip it open. I could also cover the open area below the toolbox with sheetmetal down to the bed floor to completely smooth that out, which not only would look better but would also serve as a firewall for the tank...or more as a 'dent-preventer'.

I took a bunch of detail shots of this tank and toolbox setup and I'm going to study it over the next week or so to come up with some ideas, but I'm thinking I like it!