Okay, so that's the background on the tanks and what's involved with them. I'm very lucky to have these photos on hand (I've reached out to John to see if he has more photos, but I haven't heard back from him).
So, what exactly is the problem? Here it is. The car hasn't been run in 37 years, and nearly all the rubber and gas lines in the car have deteriorated and are falling apart. So, for safety reasons, they need to be replaced. The trouble is, I cannot figure out how to access the bottom of the tank to replace the fuel line without cutting the whole chassis apart.
Here are some photos showing the problem in more detail:
Here's a gratuitous shot of the car while a lot of it has been taken apart (and carefully photographed and labeled:
Here's a shot of the right side tank with the opening for where the fuel level sender goes. It's a standard fuel level sender size so you can't stick your hand in there. I actually had to drill this hole out a tiny bit larger because I could not get the fuel sender out. The sender was obviously then installed into the new tank before it was all "sealed up" - it didn't quite line up with the hole 100% during the replacement process:
This photo shows the front of the tank, where the fuel filler is (there are two fuel fillers, one on each side):
This photo shows the left side (passenger) of the car. There is a spot for a fire extinguisher to go here, so there's this cutout here to make a large divot. You can see the foam that holds the tanks in, squeezing out the side. This is hard foam, similar to the type that you might spray inside of your house walls for insulation, and such:
There are two of these "access holes" on the top - two on each side of the car. I believe that these were there in order to spray the foam in that seals the tanks:
This is a whole that was drilled for a stereo speaker in the back. I'm not sure if the stereo was original or added later. From my experience rewiring much of the car, I believe that it was added at a later date, probably by Corky Laing, who was one of the previous owners of the car, and a rock musician. I'm pointing to one of the "foam access holes" that are on the car - this one is all the way in the back. I thought originally I might be able to remove all of this foam and access the fitting on the bottom, but subsequent measurements of the tank now lead me to believe that the top of the tank is simply right underneath my finger:
So, I took a tape measure and tried to figure out where the end of the tank was. I used a borescope to look inside the tank and they appear squarish, like the ones in the UK car. If I measured correctly, the end of the tank extends quite a bit past the speaker hole in the photo above. So, access through that small "foam access hole" seems unlikely:
The distance from the edge of the fuel tank sender to the end of the tank is about 18.5". So, as you can see, 18.5 inches goes way beyond the foam access hole inside of the speaker chamber:
On the right side, the gas tank has to have a large notch in it (large being like 12" long) in order to fit inside and allow for the area where the ignition and other switches go. These two photos show the left and right side of that:
