Over 3k miles later and couldn't be happier
I would like to chime in and give thanks to Shayne and his crew at
Custom Exhaust Specialties (CES) for building such an awesome tank! Their customer service was also outstanding. I would recommend them to anyone that values quality work and quality service. Shayne even gave me his personal cell number so we could contact him after hours in case there were any problems. Good people!
I'd also like to send thanks to
cwvandy for taking on this project with CES. There are so many other second generation Tacoma owners interested in a long range fuel tank and this is finally a real option.
We dropped off our truck on a Monday morning this past October and it was finished by the following Wednesday afternoon. My wife and I and our two dogs went brewery hopping and spent a couple nights in a inexpensive hotel in-between.
Bend is great city! Lots of good food and beer. And I'm also obsessed with breakfast and Bend had plenty to offer there as well.
The cost of the tank was $1,800. Installation, powder coat, custom skid plate, etc was another $1,000.
The tank ended up with a 40 gallon capacity and can be topped-off completely due to the venting design. We know this bc we drove out of the shop with about 3-4 gallons and took on 37.2 gallons at the station less than two miles away.
EDIT: It's been covered thoroughly already in this thread but just to be clear the tank uses all factory equipment like the sending unit, fuel gauge, pick up, pump, and all the lines except for one that runs from the tank to the charcoal canister which gets replaced with a slightly longer one. The gauge inside the cab works just like it did before however, you will notice it is very slow to react due to the capacity of the tank being increased by almost double. When my gas light comes on I can still count on running another 75 (or more) miles before I really need to get gas - pretty cool.
The tank is just a tiny bit deeper than the stock one and the pickup does NOT have a problem picking up fuel even when it gets very low. The bottom of the tank is NOT sloped towards the pick up and is completely flat. This means that due to the large flat size of the tank bottom you could have 3 or 4 gallons remaining in the tank just barely covering the bottom thus not providing much to the pickup - especially if the truck was on a steep angle on the trail.
I drove out of CES with approx 3-4 gallons of gas in my tank and went a couple miles down the road to a gas station - the needle on the gas gauge was bottomed out like I've never seen before and the truck had no issues getting to the fill station. That was flat easy driving without any big hills and again, just a couple miles away. I also don't push it beyond that due to the size of the tank and that I really don't know when it will shut off - but you can certainly let the needle bottom out for quite a while without concerns which is a new thing I am getting use to. It stresses my wife out but we have become much more in-tune with consumption and mileage rather than just reading the needle.
EDIT
The single item that comes to mind with this tank is that I do NOT fill the tank 100% if I'm NOT going to drive shortly thereafter.
Not only bc fuel goes bad as someone mentioned earlier in this thread - more on a scale of months which isn't a big concern for us but still worth noting. But also, with that much fuel and such little airspace remaining (due to the vents working so well) I am suspicious that a major temperature change could cause enough gas vapor expansion to become a problem if at least a gallon or so hadn't been been consumed from the time of fill up to the time of parking. Most stock/OEM fuel tanks come with a gallon or two worth of airspace for expansion. And the first click of the gas pump on this new tank and it is literally filled to the brim. Cool, but does this come with issues???
After talking with Shayne and reading earlier posts in this thred, it sounds like CES had addressed this with their prototype tank and was solved with a longer line from the gas tank to the charcoal canister. And on that subject I also believe that the problem with the original shorter line on the first tank was that fuel could get into that line and then into the charcoal canister at a steep angle on the trail - so the longer line issue may not even be related to expansion. But that is still in the back of my mind to be honest and am cautious to just fill the tank and then go park it immideately. Additionally, even without actual gasoline getting into the canister I wonder how a heavy vapor-load time after time could affect the "weight-gain" of the canister in the long term. Starting to split hairs now.
Having written my devils advocate point of view we still couldn't be happier and now have a 500-600 mile range with our Tacoma and FWC. Just what we always wanted!!! And with thousands of miles on the road (and off) since install and no problems to speak of we're super happy. No check engine light, passes CO emissions test - including the portion where they check the gas tank, and all in all you don't know its there aside from the cost at the pump :Wow1:.
Please note that these photos were taken on a camera phone and show the tank in various stages of completion.
