For a couple of years I’ve been intrigued by the US-designed Rotopax plastic fuel cells that can be stored on vertical or horizontal surfaces in a vehicle or on a quad or bike. They are quite small (1, 2 or 4 US gallon) and very pricey but their design is innovative and lends itself to neat and unobtrusive storage in various places around a Land Rover.

I contacted their British supplier (actually based in Holland – “Overland Adventure”) last year asking about Rotopax units designed for diesel, and they assured me that the same unit (their red pack) was intended for petrol and diesel use. I wasn’t sure about this, as diesel acts as a solvent for certain types of plastic so I checked, and in fact Rotopax strongly warn users against using anything but their unit moulded especially for diesel when carrying that fuel – a yellow pack.

Having nailed that down, I investigated further and found that, although there are many reviews of Rotopax from the US, Canada and Australia online (especially on Youtube) there are a considerable number of reviews that are negative – mostly citing leakage caused by cracks in the body of the unit or failure in the cap.  Since the asking price for an 8 litre (2 US gallon) Rotopax is around £70 it’s an expensive gamble to take.

So regretfully I turned away from Rotopax as a fuel storage system to investigate. However in chasing up reviews of Rotopax I also ran across the Cam Can fuel storage system made by Daystar, a similar idea of modular fuel storage containers moulded from plastic. In this case the container mounts on the rear spare wheel carrier of a vehicle.

Sadly the Cam Can system let me down – 1 – they do not provide a can for storing diesel, only petrol. 2 – their brackets for spare wheel mounting do not include an option for Land Rovers, only for US-built vehicles. In any case I’m not a fan of the design, which seems clunky and bulbous compared to the streamlined and slender nature of the Rotopax.

So a bit of a let down, but interesting for all that!