Killin Time II
Active member
I am original owner of a 2003 2520 SCMV. I wondered how long my tank would last. Now I know it's less than 18 years. We fueled up to a full 128 gallons and headed offshore. After smelling fumes, we stopped and opened the bilge. Gas was flowing off the top of tank into the bilge. After soap and wash down, we headed back. I read many good articles on this site about tanks. Here is where we went. We wanted to make sure it was a hole and not the fuel sender gasket. We put soapy water on top of the tank and fuel sender. We made an adapter to put an air hose over the vent on the side of the boat. We put about 5-10 psi into the tank. Even though we never reached that pressure, it pushed fuel out. No bubbles meant no gasket leak. Then we saw ripples in our video where fuel was coming up the foam at the rear edge of the tank and flowing onto the top of the tank. That meant a leak below. We pumped all of the fuel out into all of the neighbors gas cans. I marked the deck and set my circular saw to 1/16" deeper than the deck. I cut around the gas tank compartment. We removed the 28" x 96" section of deck. We used hand saws to cut along the foam beside the tank. We disconnected the four brackets. We put beams across the boat and attached large ratchet straps to the rear two brackets using 1/4" bolts and chains. We put a tension on the tank until it moved. We then moved our setup to the front brackets and repeated. Then back on the rear brackets until it came out of the floor. We had about 3-4 gallons of water and gas in the box on the foam. The tank had numerous deep pits. Then on the bottom edge, we found 1/4" x 3/8" hole. We washed the tank box, removed all of the foam and then washed and dried the box. We are now ready for a new tank. It took us 4-5 hours so far after the fuel was removed. It went better than expected due to the great threads here on this topic. Thanks. We will update this more as we go. Here are some pics so far. I am looking on Tuesday for tanks from that manufacturer, Parker and local fab shops. The original tank was 1/8" thick and not epoxy coated. I will prime and epoxy coat the new tank. If I find one 1/8" in stock, I will take it. If I have one fabricated, I will shoot for 3/16". Is there any reason not to use Rhino lining coating instead of epoxy?