electrolytic gas tank rust removal made easy

Down and dirty, this is what, why and how to do it. This is the best advice I can give after several hours of research on the web.

Remove petcock. Seal with a piece of wood and a piece of rubber. I used a piece of gas line slit up the side and a 1/4 inch piece of plywood. Measure and drill as needed, use stock petcock bolts and torque down pretty hand tight. Add 1 qt of water, look for leaks and tighten as needed. Remove gas cap assy.

Mix 1 tablespoon arm and hammer super washing soda per gallon of water in a convenient pouring container. Fill tank with this solution. IT WILL TRASH YOUR PAINT SO USE A FUNNEL.

Find a good chunk of steel to use as an anode. (explained below) never use stainless, use a magnet to be sure. A wire coat hanger works but a big drill bit or chisel works better.

Using wood, plastic, Wtf ever you can find (i cut up an old pair of flip flops) suspend your anode in the tank without it touching any metal...very important that it touches no part of the tank.

Attach the negative lead of your battery charger to the tank and the positive to your anode. Run the charger between 8 and 10 amps. Within minutes there should be bubbles and red foam collecting around the anode.

Let cook for 24 hours checking every 8 if possible and cleaning the anode with a wire brush and topping the tank up with water. After first 24 hrs dump water, rinse with highest pressure water you can, and inspect. Jab at crusty red spots with a wire brush. Black spots indicate full rust removal.

Repeat process until desired results are obtained.


WORKING THEORY:


Electrons pass from the battery charger into the gas tank. From there they move through the electrolyte (water and washing soda) and into the anode. When they pass through rust, the electrons take the rust along for the ride. It's a very easy and inexpensive way to remove the rust from an old tank.

After the rust is gone you still need to discourage new rust. Some people recommend treating the inside of the tank with wd-40 and just not letting it stay empty very long. Others say you should treat it with phosphoric acid and metal salts to put a corrosion resistant seal on the metal. I haven't gotten this far yet but will edit this post when I find the best solution.


Hope at least a few people found this useful, I've gotten a lot if great advice from this community and I'm trying to give back however I can.

Ride it like you f'n stole it.

 

sorry bud, this is nothing new

 

When you are done be sure to line the tank incase some pinholes occured. They won't show up until the paint starts to bulge out and gas starts dripping on the leaky sparkplug wires causing the head to burst into flames while your blasting down the freeway.

 

To add to the sentiment it's much easier than the above instructions. Half assing the procedure will work great. A chunk of rebar is a plenty good anode and a dash of baking soda, salt or anything with a good dose of ions is plenty to get the process started. once the juice starts flowing the water ionizes and you could technically do it with plain water. the soda or whatever is just to jump start the ionization.

I have a large (gas cap sized) rubber stopper from home depot with a rebar sized hole drilled in it. I loan it out to friends cuz it works so smooth.

 

Always nice to have additional experience added to the collective effort. Thanks for the outline.

 

I like the rubber wtopper idea.

Question: is it ok to leave the sending unit in the tank? I'd like to clean that, too.

dave

 

Good question. I don't know what effect the process might have on the rheostat's coils but it shouldn't hurt the rest of the assembly. Typically, the rheostat is made with resistive wire (really hard stuff) so I'm not inclined to believe it will do any harm. But since I don't know for sure, I could be wrong. Can anyone else chime in?

 

just the "guck" that forms in the tank wouldn't do the sending unit any good and the shake and rinse is going to slam the arm around

 

Perhaps you ought to consider pulling the sender and working on it separately.

 

I cleaned out two rusted tanks. One I used acid we use to clean our ready-mix trucks (can't remember the exact kind) and it worked out very well. It cleaned out all the rust and left it like new metal inside. Then I used Red Kote to seal it. That worked out very well and lasted for years.

I read about using the rebar and battery charger method, so I tried it on the tank I have on my bike now. The only difference it that I just used salt instead of soda for a solution. It guess mine took about 4 hours to clean out all the rust from inside the tank. I used a sink stopper with a hole drilled in it for the rebar electrode and it worked very well.
And his time I didn't seal the tank with anything. I just try to keep it filled to the top as often as possible to keep it from rusting. It's worked out and hasn't shown any signs of rust yet. I also installed a clear plastic inline filter so I can keep track of any sediment coming out of the tank and so far it is still nice and clean.