1983 Jeep J10 Fuel Tank Replacement

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The 1983 Jeep J10 fuel tank issue was discovered when filling up the gas tank completely for the first time. Gas was gushing out of a crack on the upper left of the tank as shown in the following photo.

This problem is a common affliction of these early 1980s plastic gas tanks and many others have mentioned cracks developing in the exact same location at the corner along the seams where the two plastic parts of the tank were mated together. The problem with repairing plastic gas tanks is that using epoxy or any type of glue or resin doesn't always last very long when exposed to gasoline. I think the best solution to repairing an existing tank is to plastic weld the crack back together using a hot soldering gun or plastic welder. I opted to buy a brand new tank and that was another problem in itself. The early 1980s tanks had a side mounted fuel sender as you can see in the following photo.

My understanding is that manufacturing tanks with this type of sender mounting location is now outlawed probably because when the tank is completely filled up, the sender is submerged so if the seals fail then this is more prone to leaking. No one manufactures new or reproduction tanks with side mounted fuel senders so it is impossible to get a faithful reproduction of this particular tank.

The closest reproduction tank and sender I could find was manufactured by MTS Company. I purchased the MTS-0013 tank and MTSJPSU1 sender. Note that this tank has the fill and vent on the front of the tank like the original. Unfortunately, this tank is not a very good reproduction of the original and you should be aware of these problems:

The bottom molding of the new tank is not the same as the original so it doesn't fit snugly in the skid plate. I used spray foam to fill in the gaps.
The fill and vent holes are much smaller than the original and have no lip so the hose does not clamp to it well. I had to order a new generic fuel hose by the length to replace the original molded hose. The original tank's fill attachment is much bigger than on the new tank. Clamping down the original hose tightly doesn't prevent leaks when filling up. I have problems with filling the new tank because of the smaller hose, but it can be done with some finesse and swearing.
The tank is slightly smaller than the original in all dimensions. There will be about a 0.75" gap between the straps and the tank body on both front and back. I used rubber spacers to ensure the tank is secured snugly in place.
The fuel sender resistance is not the same as the original and required a 100 ohm resistor in parallel to improve the accuracy especially on empty!

Spacers are needed to lower the tank straps from the bed by about 0.75" to provide clearance for the top mounted sender and hoses. I used metal U bars from Home Depot to make the spacers. The following photos show the mount locations of the tank straps to the bottom of the bed, the new U bar spacers and new tank mounted in place. Rubber spacers about 0.5" to 0.75" thick are also used between the two large bars supporting the bed to press down against the top of the tank.