I thought others may benefit from a mod I did to the water tank on my Apex Nano 193BHS, which had a badly bowing/bulging fresh water tank.
This is what it originally looked like:
I'm honestly not sure if this was due to the poor support, or from when I forgot I was filling it and it was likely under a bit of pressure. I imagine a little of both.
I had read about folks welding some additional supports to the underside, but I do not weld, nor did I want to deal with taking the trailer somewhere.
Since I had a sheet of plywood around I decided I would make some slide-in supports instead. First I had to jack up the tank so I could raise it enough where there was room below the tank and the existing support that runs the length of each side of the tank:
Then I used a pair of pliers to back out the screws that hold the existing cross supports. Once they were raised a bit I had enough room to fit in my angle grinder:
Supports could then be removed:
Once this was done I constructed three supports to slide in underneath the tank. Why 3? Because I was lazy and did not want to hook up the utility trailer to retrieve a full sheet of plywood from the store. So I was limited to 2x4 sheets I had on hand that I then cut down to fit. I thought about just sliding in the 1/2 plywood and calling it a day, but figured that I should beef them up a bit to minimize the sag. I had some cedar 2x4s lying around and figured it would significantly strengthen the panels without adding much weight:
Once these were built I primed and painted them black to protect the wood. I would have not taken this step had I found treated plywood, but they were completely out at the store. Once this was complete I removed the steps on the trailer and slid them in. They went in with a little coaxing from a mallet.
I then added the straps back on and secured them with some 1/2 self tapping screws. It was important to use this length to ensure I could not accidentally puncture the tank.
My tank went from reading empty to 1/3 full, so I am guessing I reclaimed at least 6-10 gallons of usable water with this mod.
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