In total, I painted three coats of 2-part epoxy paint alternating between white and grey so I could make sure I had good coverage with each coat. Last week, I painted on a sealer/liner by KBS Coatings that takes 4 days to fully cure. No problem since I visit the boat once a week. Looking at the tank yesterday (16 Jun), I'm happy to report the sealer worked out really nice and is a very hard surface inside the tank. Even has a bit of a gloss look to it too.
In the meantime, I've been working to drill and tap one of the inspection plates for the fittings to feed fuel to the engine and the return. I still need to install a fitting for the vent but need to make sure I measure what I need first.
The only other thing I need to do is also install a fill port and this project will finally be done. It has taken a little more than a year to work on this one project, mainly because of only being able to visit once a week. While there have been some very frustrating moments during this project, I'm very happy now that this project is coming to an end. Soon, the engine will be back on board and other tasks will be completed in order to get the boat ready.
I shot this video to show the interior with the sealer/liner painted on and how hard the material is.
Here's a picture of how the tank looks today. Inspection plates with fittings installed, minus the fill port.
I know this is a very crazy idea to have built a fuel tank out of fiberglass and I know of only one other NS27 owner who did it. Now, the real test will come once the last pieces come together and fuel is poured into it.
