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Kevin Amstrong has come up with a useful removable rear-seat auxiliary tank for his Quik. The installation, which has BMAA Minor Mod approval, has obvious applications on other trikes, and maybe fixed-wings too. Owners of these should find it pretty straight-forward to submit their own similar mods based on Kevin's legwork; Kevin's contact details are shown on this page.
On a Quik, the installation raises total fuel capacity to 92 litres including reserve. That's equivalent to 5.75h or 450 miles!
The design makes use of an Eltex 27 litre marine tank, available from
International Marine Supplies as part no.
SE2006 (approval 80996/11). This is mated to a standard primer bulb, a marine in-line all-metal fuel tap and proprietary connectors and tubing to provide a simple way of topping up the main tank in-flight. Because the tubing is small diameter, the flow rate is slow, so there's no excuse for overfilling the main tank.
The extra tank is held in place by the passenger seat belts and on 912 engines connects to the main tank using the existing spare inlet/outlet tube, normally blanked off at the factory. On 912S engines, which make use of this tube for fuel circulation, it is necessary to install a T-piece.
The entire installation cost the right side of £100, with the tank itself costing around £30.
Anyone wanting to devise a similar installation might want to take account of an incident which Kevin has witnessed since getting his approval. 'Watching a GT450 slide along the runway on its side recently, made me think that there might be a safety benefit if the breather tube was rigged to stop fuel spillage, run first to port then looped starboard, to stop fuel running out if you tipped the trike.'
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Tank fits neatly on the passenger seat, leaving clearance between belt buckle and seat back |
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Cap-mounted detachable breather uses different fitting from transfer pipe |
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Pipe run avoids chafes and kinks and uses P&M-approved tubing |
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Detail of main tank connections (912S) |
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