hey twistman post a pic of that 46 OE

My Scarab has Aluminum (or maybe stainless) Tanks, Not wood.. My Cat has fuel cells, not wood.. I can’t believe that a wood box fiber glassed shut would be considered an acceptable fuel tank.

It seems that the hull would flex over the years and put stress cracks in the fuel tank (or wood box), and start allowing gas to soak in; witch it did on this guys boat.

They us bladders inside a wood capsule, not a "wood" fuel tank.

My 33' Active cat had Steel tanks, our 33' Image [Motor City Magic] had Aluminum, but our 32' Skater [EASTERN EXPRESS] had the epoxy, Kevlar, & balsa core tanks. EASTERN EXPRESS had 35+ races, winning 1 World Championship & many Checkered Flags with out a fuel tank failure. How much time was on the Ocean Express, if it was New than I would be Mad. My point if it's on a boat it can Fail, give it time.

Thats the way I was told.

The Ocean is less than 6 years old, so yes the owner is unhappy to say the least.

Epoxy, Kevlar was used in the 1968 Bertram’s also; but not 2 pieces of plywood wrapped with regular fiberglass and used to hold fuel, that’s just unsafe IMHO and I cant believe its done like that.

honestly i doubt fiberglass tanks are any more or less prone to problems than aluminum tanks. And as Mark and the Twistman (hows it going Rossi ) said Skater has done it since day one just about. Deans AMT had glass tanks in it and he just sealed them with some kinda NASA super high tech gooo and they worked fine and you know what that thing went through .

Rossi whens that 49 rudder boat gonna hit the water. That boat is bad a$$

Back in 1974 I bought the very first Offshore performance boat sold by Jim Clem,, [Mr Lancer , Awesome, ect, ect, then he was Clems Boatland] a 24' Cheetah hull that was built in California. This hull came with a glass fuel tank, we didn't even make the first race and it leaked. Even Jim said it would not work, and gave me a Aluminum tank to replace it. When I did, I found just one small spot that had bare wood, gas would leak out of the rear stringer by the motor mounts. Back then all this stuff was new so you just learned to improve it, and we did. Today you would hope that these problems would be worked out will fuel tanks, but after reading about other fuel tank leaks, and the new fuels, here on OSO I think not.

"glassdave" Not at dad's shop anymore, I'm am on my own. I am building a new 46' staight shaft rudder boat, my plug is just about done. We hope to be testing in the fall of 2008.

Merry christmas.

nice! cant wait to see it, might hafta make a field trip up there this winter. Yo Tizbad . . . . . road trip?