what is the trick to getting the fuel tank installed?
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what is the trick to getting the fuel tank installed?
02 2500. As previous I took the tank off to change it and the fuel pump. Got it back up in there but I'm stuck about there.
Bought new straps, compared them to the old ones, they seemed to be the same length and bent about the same. But the straps don't come anywhere close to the mounts. Front one is about four inches away straight up. Rear one I finally grabbed the old strap and it just got close enough for the bolt, but it cross-threaded or something and ripped the clip off the nut with maybe two threads in.
May have to drop the tank and reshape the front strap (can't take it off with the tank in) and of course it's better quality than stock, instead of being flat it's slightly bent on the edges so I may have to hammer it flat to make it bendable. If I jack the strap it spreads it out of place, maybe if I put a 2x4 on top of the jack it would push it all upward.
Tank seems to be lined up right with the filler neck hose over the frame, I jack it until it seems tight but I go under and can still move it some.
Tank is used relatively recent replacement from another 02 2500 in the you-pick yard, so it's been installed before.
This shouldn't be this hard. Two bolts.
Every single step of this job has been a fight and I wish I'd just junked it.
Bought new straps, compared them to the old ones, they seemed to be the same length and bent about the same. But the straps don't come anywhere close to the mounts. Front one is about four inches away straight up. Rear one I finally grabbed the old strap and it just got close enough for the bolt, but it cross-threaded or something and ripped the clip off the nut with maybe two threads in.
May have to drop the tank and reshape the front strap (can't take it off with the tank in) and of course it's better quality than stock, instead of being flat it's slightly bent on the edges so I may have to hammer it flat to make it bendable. If I jack the strap it spreads it out of place, maybe if I put a 2x4 on top of the jack it would push it all upward.
Tank seems to be lined up right with the filler neck hose over the frame, I jack it until it seems tight but I go under and can still move it some.
Tank is used relatively recent replacement from another 02 2500 in the you-pick yard, so it's been installed before.
This shouldn't be this hard. Two bolts.
Every single step of this job has been a fight and I wish I'd just junked it.
Last edited by William Kisselstein; Feb 4, 2021 at 2:45 PM.
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Joined: Aug 2013
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FWIW the Dorman (I think) straps come shaped a little off. I would not buy them again. They are very hard to reshape. This is okay at the rear, but the front one cannot be removed with the tank in place.
What I ended up doing was moving the jack to each end of the tank and raising it as high as it would go. I found I could get a bolt started with the original flat rear strap and once I was sure it was threaded right I moved to the front.
There, with the replacement strap, I had to bend it somewhat to get the hole to line up and then I used a like 120MM metric thread bolt to reach the nut. It clears the driveshaft fine, and is tight, just there's about 2 inches between the strap end and the nut. Nobody has an all thread bolt that long so maybe it would go tighter, but it doesn't need to.
So that answers that.
If you had to, in a pinch, you can drop a bolt down from the top of the frame to slide the strap onto and run a nut up from the bottom. A 7/16ths cap bolt I think will even drop down and not spin - but you need a long bolt, it's about 4 inches just from the frame top to the hole the clip nut sits on.
What I ended up doing was moving the jack to each end of the tank and raising it as high as it would go. I found I could get a bolt started with the original flat rear strap and once I was sure it was threaded right I moved to the front.
There, with the replacement strap, I had to bend it somewhat to get the hole to line up and then I used a like 120MM metric thread bolt to reach the nut. It clears the driveshaft fine, and is tight, just there's about 2 inches between the strap end and the nut. Nobody has an all thread bolt that long so maybe it would go tighter, but it doesn't need to.
So that answers that.
If you had to, in a pinch, you can drop a bolt down from the top of the frame to slide the strap onto and run a nut up from the bottom. A 7/16ths cap bolt I think will even drop down and not spin - but you need a long bolt, it's about 4 inches just from the frame top to the hole the clip nut sits on.
Last edited by William Kisselstein; Feb 18, 2021 at 7:50 PM.
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