I already knew from the start that the fuel tank was rusty. I thought it wouldn’t be that bad, but reality wasn’t so kind.
I won’t do any fuel tank rust removal work myself.
The bottom line is you can’t do it without proper equipment . Nowadays, convenient rust removal &and coating products are readily available. If you’ve done it several times before, you might succeed, but if this is your first time doing rust removal and coating, you’ll almost certainly fail .
One thing I want to warn you about: once you put coating inside the fuel tank, you can never remove it. There’s no room for installation failure.
Cleaning the ceiling, floor, and pipes thoroughly of rust, drying, degreasing, and applying coating evenly across the entire surface is extremely difficult.
Be careful with used fuel tanks that have been rust-removed and coated.
Check with an endoscope! The “ceiling” is actually super important
Nowadays, convenient endoscopes like this are readily available on Amazon and other sites. They don’t cost much, so it’s handy to have one around, and they help solve all sorts of problems.
I checked inside the fuel tank with an endoscope. The floor is in worse condition than the ceiling.
It seems like there’s some moisture mixed in. I can pretty much guess what happened—it looks intentional.
I’m going to ask a trusted rust removal specialist to handle the tank
If you get the chance, polishing the back of the fuel tank will help prevent rust. There’s rust in various spots, so it’s best to scrape off the loose areas and check them.
Pinholes turn into holes… crumbling apart.
Where pinholes have opened, the paint is cleanly stripped away, making them easy to spot. However, from the outside, you can see where holes have opened, but you can’t tell where they’re about to open.
In the end, you fill the holes from the outside and cover the inside with coating—that’s how it goes.
Solder has excellent compatibility with iron.
Polish the base material thoroughly with a stainless steel brush, then use stainless steel flux and flow solder for a clean fill.
Modern soldering irons have temperature control and various tip options, making fine work easier. Since the base material is large, it’s best to choose one with higher temperature capability.
I suspect more holes will probably open up as we go through the rust removal process.
If you’re going to coat it, you have to do proper rust removal
To put it bluntly, you could carelessly coat this condition and it would still look decent. The truth is, only the person who did the work knows what’s really going on inside.
And if the tank has a very complex internal structure, it’s best not to attempt DIY coating.
What happens if you fail? The coating won’t adhere properly and will eventually peel off in flakes, leaving debris inside the tank, so be careful.
For now, until I find a better tank, I’ll use this fuel tank, so I want to ask my trusted expert to handle it.
ポチップ
