S22 Ballast tanks????

[cyclone]

Thread of the year, fer sher. What awesome info. The tanks are not open space, there are structural members in there. It would be difficult if not impossible to seal that area up.
I suggested once, assuming the tanks were open space, that you could spray contact cement in there, then insert and inflate a small weather balloon. Not with stringers in there. it could potentially crack fiberglass anyway. It would also be an extreme explosion hazard while doing it;)

The access plate is EXACTLY what I want to put in the forward bilge of my boat to access that space under the walk through.

Somebody's gonna have videos up using the Home Depot camera soon! I can pull a sending unit too. I don't think I have the same access panel you do, wakejunky. I'll check when it stops hailing.  F****** s******y weather so far this year, worst in 10 yrs. Sorry, had to say that, I usually have 30 hours on my boat by now.

[wakejunky]

PSullivan3 the vietcong thing cracked me up. oh well, the ballast access plates are on the sides of the tank and are roughly 5" in diameter, the sending unit holes are probably 1 1/2".

Cyclone, I got a pic you might be interested in. the forward bilge area in my SX is very different from my E22. In the old E22 the large hole just opened up to a wide open space under the bow floor. this is not the case on the SX and I'm assuming the S22. there is a "liner" built in to that area that curves toward the right driver kickpanel. I'm guessing Toyota added this to assist in running hoses, electrical and control cables to the bilge area.

[cyclone]

It's kind of hard to tell what I'm looking at in that pic. I haven't fully explored the boat yet, weather has been miserable.

I'm guessing that I can fit some lead up there, already got one bucket of weights from the tire store. gonna melt me some today.

[wakejunky]

Sorry about that I should have been more clear. the tunnel for the hoses, wire and cables is only  6" wide and curves. the top arrow is to show the curve of the wall. the bottom shows the width and shape of the tunnel. I'm not sure if you can get enough lead in there to do any good and I don't think you would want it on top of the hoses and cables.

[PSullivan3]

Hey wakejunky, In the ballast tank JPG you are showing an access hole which looks like it is next to the gas tank.If it is thats where the tank is sealed at the stringer and mine is foamed there.I have been exploring.The more I explore the easier this is going to be.If you have an access hole or sending unit through the top of the tank take a look in there and tell me what you see the seal is a minimal expanding marine or waterproof polyurethane foam this does 2 things it seals off the area and expands very little so you can control it in layers  also you can smooth it to  give a gloss finish. that being the case where you have sending units and vents through the top means ,and I already have drilled thru ( no damage to the strength) and found the beautiful foam along the stringer,under the storage closet tank ,and at the stern of the tank tomorrow  (hopefully) I will have video of it and run a water die test,and seal off any leaks.Be useable in 24 hours after foam any leaks.

[wakejunky]

PSullivan- The sealant they used to seal my tanks is the same blue/green stuff that some of us have ran into when drilling for PerfectPass. (The stuff between the liner and hull)

If this project works out for you and your interested I'm selling all the electronics to run the factory SX ballast system. Switch panel w/LED level guages, relay block to control pumps and solenoids, the DECC to run the relay block, the solenoids, the level sensors and all the wire harnesses for the whole system. Also some various plumbing parts.

Seems like you have done a lot of homework on this, hope it works out for you.

[PSullivan3]

Well after sealing the port side tank and then moving to the startboard side drilled the hole put the camera in it would more money and time than 700lbs is worth.I bought bags and am in the process of installing them inside where the tanks are. The cost in the end would have gotten well over a grand when the fiberglass was repaired, the tank starboard side is not seal at the bow becuase of wires and cables, the size of the repair would have been huge. So bags it is.thanks for everyones help

[FreeLance]

PSullivan, how did it go putting bags in where the tanks normally are?  I still have high hopes for using this space for some amount of ballast so I can get away from chewing up space in the v-drive lockers.  Did you capture any of the video of your explorations that you can post?

Something that I thought would be cool (or crazy person talking) for you guys with the SX boats would be to mimic the PureVurt system that Calabria uses.  All you would need to do is drill 2 3" holes in the back of the boat and figure out how to mount and wire electronic waste gates back there.  Then fill and drain in minutes with no pumps.  Pete jogged my memory of this idea with the more than hilarious WW epic thread when he talked about the under floor ballast on the SX that was similar to the Calabrias.

Pics attached are the Pro-V electric gates and what they would look like on the Epic.

[cyclone]

How did you access the space and what did you seal it with? I am having a brainstorm right now. Calair ProV PureVert ballast system. It has twin 40 gal tanks on each side. Transom mounted dump valves So, you cut holes in the transom for the dump valves, which are prolly 4" around, probably a 5" hole. You cut one or two relatively large access holes and use a 6" deck fitting, which will not make the boat weaker they will actually reinforce the surface of the tank. Its just the boat floor, not the hull. It's not in a weight bearing area.  We'd have to have Psullivans findings and review old posts, there's been a lot of good info on this forum as to what's under the floor. Someone would have to have big balls to do it, but all you need is the dump valves, sealed tanks, vent lines. I could make the existing switches open the valves. not even touch the level controls. Not sure what the valves look like, but I know I've seen them posted somewhere.

Here's a link to their boat with the system.

http://www.calabriaboats.com/2007_Calabria_Brochure.pdf

[cyclone]

Dump valves are the black things, look to be about 3", plastic part. Boat has cool supertrapp mufflers.

[cyclone]

Duhh, I found the SAME picture Lance! shouldhave read the post

They are actuated internally by a solenoid. I don't know if those same valves would work, I'll try to dig them up. I bet they're an RV part.

http://www.calabriaboats.co.uk/Pure%20Vert.htm

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6,234,099&OS=6,234,099&RS=6,234,099

[PSullivan3]

The bags are in the tanks filled them with air and slid them as far forward as I could hopefully no reason to take up bow spacethen a 560 bag in the trunk 1260lbs total withgood distribution,have not hooked up the pumping or anything else yet toooo busy at work do have the sea cock in also . That system is OK my neighbor has the same boat on the picture not enough weight still carrying 800lb bags and I don't like the wake except for surfing but it holds a crap load of people and loves gas. The other thing I'm working is Zero off GPS PP talking to Andy Mapple to see if we can make it work unusual boat needs unusual equipment. Also you guys that have the SX I noticed the Actuator to lift the engine hatch can you get the stroke length on that I'm putting an electric one in and one in the trunk, I'm planning on making the southeast round up next year and plan to be pimped, with a couple of more mods like I"m talking to a fiberglass guy to make a seat on the starboard behind the drivers seat ( more storage,possibly a real cooler), tint the windows this weekend etc... Will take some time off this fall and finish all the projects. I was going to sell it but the wife talked me out of it. So I"ll put it the way I want it. It will be like an SX, only stealth style. I will get pictures and post them as work progresses.

[toyotafreak]

I just read through the thread again and wanted to feedback what I heard. Please correct me if I've missed something.

There are four aluminum stringers bonded in the underfloor ballast areas on all v-drives. These stringers bond hull to liner, and prevented the SX boats from just dropping in custom nylon tanks. Instead, the spaces were sealed during construction and now the entire underfloor space in those areas on the SX is wet, including the four stringers.

In the S22, the same four stringers are present, but the spaces were not sealed. The port side is pretty close to being sealed, and the main leakage is probably between hull and liner which could conceivably be sealed if enough access holes were opened up to reach the whole hull/liner joint line.

The S22 starboard side has these same issues, plus the space is not closed on the forward end. To seal the stbd side, you'd have to cut enough access holes to seal the hull/liner joint line AND you'd have to structurally close the forward end.


I'm unclear as to how the SX tanks were sealed and why the hull surface inside the tank would be any different type of fiberglass finish than any other piece of the bare hull (not sure where bare hull can even be seen besides in the depth finder hole). The mention of the foam leads me to believe that the SX tanks became tanks because they closed out the forward end of the stbd space, and then paid more attention to how they laid down that syntactic resin before dropping the liner into the hull.

I know that all the boats used that syntactic resin to bond liner to hull, and hull top to hull bottom. It's the blue stuff, and it's heavy. There's no way they would've filled the entire underfloor space with that stuff. If for some reason they filled the space, it would've been with some typical foam like that nasty creme colored stuff.

In the S22, you could run bags in there, but because of the two stringers within each compartment, you'd have to do a very complicated bag to get a lot or most of the space. Or you could punch several holes and lay a fillet of sealant between liner and hull and close off the stbd fwd end and make wet tanks. It would sure be nice to have some images from inside there.

In the SX, now you're talking about doing the patented Calabria floodgate system using your in floor tanks. I love it, good luck!!! As soon as someone cuts one of them transom holes, we could really get some great pics inside the tanks. I bet an S22 guy could seal the whole joint up to the battery area through that aft hole.