The weather finally was cooperative and I was able to get started on tearing out my old rusty fuel tank in my 91 Formula - I just got it removed... Now I've gotta weld up the previous owner's "access hole".

First off, this was NOT that hard to do - Since I've been waiting probably 2-3 months to get good weather to do this, I had a lot of time to read all the stories of how the access hole was sooooo much better because dropping the tank was a bitch. Let me say this: The tank removal wasn't difficult, you just had to remove a fair amount of stuff in order to get to it - The single hardest part for me personally was the removal of the exhaust - I wound up cutting it and will reweld it later on.

I followed the steps mentioned here:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tech...p-not-bad.html

Next my buddy is gonna come over with his welder and we're gonna stitch the crude "access hole" back together before installing the new tank.... but that's for another day.

On question tho: My old tank straps look fine and I'm going to reuse them - There are some foam strips on the TOP of the tank - The old ones are pretty bad and the new tank didn't come with these - Are they required? Are they available? I've seen replacement straps, but not the foam.

 

I don't remember any foam pieces, but then again it's been a few years and I'm getting old/senile

There shouldn't be anything on top of the tank that would be hot or anything like that - I'd think the reason for it was to reduce rattles maybe. I'd think anything that could be stuck/glued/whatever on there would be fine. Craft store sells some stuff like felt with adhesive on the back, or might just use those 3M doublesided foam adhesive strips, or I don't know - use your imagination. In the end I think the tank straps just mash the tank up in the hole against something up there, and the foam was probably just a rattle-reducer of sorts.