Long range fuel tank in a camper truck for remote overland travel

Problem: fuel capacity/range

Cuthbert has a 90 litre main fuel tank, a 110 litre long range fuel tank and two 20 litre Jerry cans. These provide a total fuel capacity of 240 litres and a range of approximately 1600 km/1000 miles. During our research into driving in South and Central America, we have discovered that the countries between Panama and Mexico all have very high sulphur diesel, which wouldn’t do for Cuthbert’s Euro 5 engine. We also have it on good authority that, due to government bureaucracy, it can be difficult for foreigners to obtain fuel of any quality in Bolivia. We have therefore decided to increase Cuthbert’s long range fuel carrying capacity.

Solution: fitting additional long range fuel tank

I set about designing a long range fuel tank to fit at the back of Cuthbert (suspended from under the chassis) but an important design limitation was to maintain the existing ground clearance and the departure angle. This limitation has led to the tank having quite a complicated shape but the resulting design has made maximum use of the space available.

Once I had a draft design, I contacted a few fuel tank manufacturers and chose Pro Alloy www.proalloy.co.uk to make the new tank for us. It is beautifully welded 3 mm aluminium and has a capacity of 160 litres.

A selector tap is installed so that we can select either the front or rear long range tank when transferring fuel to the main tank.

The new tank when empty adds 20 kg to the truck, and full of fuel it weighs 148 kg. The compromise is that when we are operating with the new maximum fuel load, we will need to reduce the amount of water we carry from 230 litres to about 80 litres. We see this as an acceptable compromise given that for the limiting legs of our forthcoming South America trip, Cuthbert will have a total fuel capacity of 400 litres and a range of approx. 2630 km/1630 miles. The design of the additional tank makes it quite easy to remove when we return to Europe and do not need the extra range.