Update by Ed Higginbotham to the
Austin Mini Cooper S project car
May 15, 2015
We put the left tank in first. You need to bolt the hold-down strap to the body before lining up the filler neck and then sliding the rest of the tank into place.
With the lights all working on our Mini Cooper S, we could now install the twin fuel tanks that the later Cooper S cars came with. The tanks block access to the taillight wiring, so you must get the lights worked out first.
We painted the tanks with Eastwood Chassis Black, picked up new filler caps from Mini Mania and then went about figuring out the plumbing.
There is a vent tube on each tank. Graham at Heritage Garage suggested we use hard sprinkler drip line to duplicate what the factory used for vent lines. He also suggested to keep from smelling fuel in the car, that we run the line up and over the tank and then let the line drain through the floor.
There is also a hard line that connects the two tanks. When we visited Heritage Garage, he had one right in stock. Connect appropriate fuel hose and clamps, work the tanks into place, strap them down, and this job is done.
From there, you can run a fuel line to the electric fuel pump located underneath the trunk floor on the subframe.
While the tanks fit tightly, this whole ordeal was not as bad a job as we anticipated.
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