Cleaning up the fuel tank
I started off with three fuel tanks. One was covered in fibreglass patches, and one was still sweated into the carrier, so that left the third as the best option for restoration.
It looked in reasonably good condition, and after it was sand-blasted it came up reasonably well.
It had some corrosion and pinholes in the bottom corners, so I got those soldered up and the tank pressure-tested, and it all looked good.
There was a steel patch on the side, which looked a bit ominous, but it didn’t seem to be leaking so I thought it was best to leave well alone.
I gave it the usual coats of cold gal and etch primer, and all was looking good.
I decided to give the inside of the tank a good cleanout, and to seal it to make sure there were no issues.
I got hold of a tank sealer kit from KBS coatings, of
I sloshed in some of their Aquaklean, according to their instructions, and – woe is me – the stuff started to drip out from around the aforementioned steel patch plate. I can only surmise that the Aquaklean cleaned up the interior as promised, and removed the junk that was sealing up the holes around the steel plate.
I took the plate off (it was obviously recent, it was held on with tek screws) and found a large rust hole behind the plate.
Well, I hit the hole and its surrounds with the wire brush on the angle grinder, and it cleaned up quite nicely.
I got a piece of 1mm steel plate (I had some useful bits lying around), and applied a 5mm coat of Septone Metal Tech to the back of it. According to Septone, Metal Tech is “a stainless steel and fibreglass reinforced patching compound designed for use in the repair of holes, cracks, dents and rust outs”, which sounded like the right stuff to me.
I screwed the plate over the hole, with the 5mm of Metal Tech behind it, smoothed off the edges and let it cure for a day. No problems, it looks as if it’ll last for a hundred years.
BTW, I thought of brazing a plate over the hole (I’m not fond of epoxy, it seems like a cop-out), but I was scared of melting the solder which holds the tank together – I really didn’t fancy trying to rebuild the whole tank from scratch.
That done I applied the KBS Rustblast, which is a rust converter, then dried the tank with a heat gun for about an hour (again, as in the instructions from KBS).
Following that I tipped their Gold Standard Tank Sealer in, then spent the next two hours turning the tank over and over, and eventually managing to get most of the spare sealer out.
Interesting note – I poured (or rather dripped) the stuff that came out of the tank into a bucket with some water in the bottom, and by next day it had set into something similar to a rock.
After a couple of days I checked the inside of the tank, and it feels as if there’s a glass coating inside the tank.
So, two coats of Galmet gloss black, and it’s looking good.
The tank getting Aquakleaned – all sealed up so it can be turned over.
The remains of the pin-holes
The Hole . . .
The Clean Hole . . .
The Patched Hole . . .
The KBS tank sealing kit. This was described as a large motorcycle tank kit, btw, and was supposed to seal up to a 10 gallon tank. It did the Series 10 gallon tank with no problems.
The finished article.
