The Mighty Merc – Fueling The Beast
With the doubler in place I lost a good 6” in clearance for the stock tank. Which meant it would no longer fit. I had wanted to modify the Bronco II tank I had on hand as it would allow me to place the tank in a better place, and net me an additional 2 gallons of fuel capacity. But in the name of time, I wound up just picking up a 2 door sport tank (17 gallons) so that I can get up and running quicker. To make the Bronco II tank fit I needed to relocate the charcoal canister, and redo the whole spare tire area as well as graft on the fittings to the BII tank from the old Mercury tank. Not impossible, but a little time consuming.
To be honest, I really want this thing to get out of my garage sooner rather than later so I hit the easy button. All three tanks side by side:
The Ford quick disconnect stuff for their fuel systems always give me a bunch of grief whenever I need to actually disconnect it. So I grabbed a few fittings to get rid of it and make my life easier when I have to drop the tank. Since I kind of destroyed the body side quick disconnect the last time I pulled the tank, I didn’t really have an option.
– Russel PN 640853 for the pump side (Quick disco to -6 AN)
– NOS PN 741-15411 for 2’ of -6AN fuel line
– Earl PN 361-165056 for a -6 AN male to 5/16” hard line compression fitting
All of that netted me this hose:
I just lopped off the stupid disconnect on the body side and attached the new hose with the compression fitting. It’s much nicer to work with now.
A little bracketry hacking of the stock tank mount:
Flipped it upside down from its normal mounting and welded it to the cross member:
Which allows me to drop the cross member without dropping the tank. It was a bit of a pain wiggling the tank into place with that stock bracket flipped, but it’ll get the job done.