83 Sceptre Tank removal

Entourage · #1 04-03-2010, 10:30 PM

Wanted to see if anyone has ever removed a fuel tank from the later model sceptre with the box seats. I pulled the main floor panel up and i could have sworn the tank looked to be wider than the floor panel. Has anyone ever did this? did you have to cut anything out in the floor to remove the tank. Any feedback would be appreciated.

BigLew · #2 04-03-2010, 10:45 PM

Entourage,

There have been a couple done. I'm not sure the had the boxes like ours (mine is an '85). I think if you measure across the the tank lid from screws to screws and compare that to the tank width itself, you will find that if you cut back the "flash" of the liner, the tank will clear. It won't have much, if any room left over, but it should fit through, albeit a bear of a job. At least that is what I am planning on.

One guy on here disconnected everything, pulled back the hoses so that they were just back under the liner, pulled the sending unit and used a bar inside the tank with a chain welded to the center of the bar to pull the tank. Yes, he wrapped the bar to prevent any sparks!

It apparently worked.

Entourage · #3 04-03-2010, 11:38 PM

Yeah this is my dads boat, my boat is a 79 with no box seats and i did not have this problem with mine. I'm trying to get feedback before i do this. The sending unit trick sounds good thanks for the info.

gss036 · #4 04-04-2010, 10:13 PM

I did my 1989 23 WA last year. It has the step up for the seats. My tank was a 115 gallon tank. It was 28 inches wide X 100 inches long and I think 12-14 deep. After removing the 2 deck plates and unhooking everything and getting the fuel out and putting in water and draining that, I measured up the tank, the deck hole was 27 inches wide, so I had to take 1/2 inch off of each side. Then tried pulling the tank back and out, it would not come out without removing my 225 HP Honda engine and I was not going to try that so I used a sawzall and cut about 3 feet off the tank and then it came out. I had a tank made, but went with a 75 gallon tank and that fit back in pretty easy. Lot of work, but now have a new fuel tank, new 225 Honda and a new T9.9 Yamaha kicker.