mods & tweaks, reviews & musings about motorcycles, parts, & accessories

Monday, October 24, 2011

ims 4.75 tank install

This was from a forum, posted in May, 2011.

I saw a box today at the front of the garage.. maybe the first 4.75 g. ims tank in common consumer hands! So i quickly took off my old 3.1 tank, & began putting it together.

The instructions are pretty slim, as they were on the 3.1 ims tank. I took off the mounting brackets & mounted them on the new tank.

Not much stuff came with it.. a vacuum hose, vent hose, o-ring, cap, directons, stickers.

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I dry mounted the tank, & was not happy with the clearance of the flatlander radiator guard. It slightly touched the tank, which i felt could rub a hole in the tank with use. So i bent the edges of the rad guard & it has better clearance.

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I mounted the fuel pump, after zip tying the lift pump hose to it. No zip ties came with the tank, but i have those around. this tube is inside the tank.

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Now a 't' comes with the tank, which is supposed to be spliced into a vacuum tube coming out of the throttle body. Some of us have removed some stock doo dads, which left a port in the throttle body. I had it plugged, but forgot about it. I called up my old buddy Tom to ask what he did when he installed his Safari. He reminded my of the extra port & i plugged the longer tube (the vent tube) into it. The shorter tube won't reach.. it is meant to splice into the t. It's hard to see without pointers or arrows, but it is the 2 adjacent tubes going into the throttle body.

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Next, bolt it down. I had to twist the 3.1 a bit to get the bolts to line up.. no different here. But people shouldn't get upset.. it is a flexible plastic tank. Just push it until the holes line up. Screw them in & forget it.

Now i've got about a 300 mile range.. nice!

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I put my saddle bags over the tank.. it's wider but the bags fit better than on the 3.1. I think i'm going to like this tank.

10/24/2011
After putting several thousand miles on it, the tank performs well. I do not notice any fuel sloshing, but it is only 4.7 g. If it is full, the fuel does not slosh. If there are a couple of gallons left, that is only ~ 12# of fuel, & any sloshing would be hard to notice.

The only problem i have is the vacuum pump does not work at getting the last of the gas from the wings. Other people have this same problem. Evidently, it is the vacuum pump that is in the tank.. it uses the pulsing vacuum from the throttle body, but it sometimes sticks & does not draw the fuel up. I have heard of others who cleaned it up & got it working, which i will try someday. But i have run over 4g. of gas out of it, so that is nice. I ran it out to test the pump, & had to slosh it around to get enough gas to get to a station. It is more of a minor inconvenience, but it would be nice if it worked correctly. I'll address this issue someday.

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