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Muriatic acid is the devil! Tank cleaning.


jkelly

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I'm restoring my 240z and just dropped the tank. It's not at a severe level of rust on the inside, so I'm wondering what I should do, if anything. I attached a picture of what I can see through the fill hole. Should I do anything?

 

I cleaned my old 280z tank using the muriatic acid method and coated with POR15 tank sealer, but what an ordeal. Not to mention mama said muriatic acid is the devil.

post-49039-0-02346800-1494118840_thumb.jpg

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With rust like that I'd just leave it. I imagine most fuel tanks have rust to that kind of degree. Otherwise, I'm an advocate of having the tank steamed and then leave it uncoated. As long as you don't leave it empty and open you'll be just fine.

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That amount of rust wouldn't concern me.

 

If you still want it gone in a more environmentally friendly way, soak it in apple cider vinegar. Here is a before/after of a VW trans mount that soaked for a few days and just rinsed off with water...

 

TransMountBefore_zpsacbcd383.jpg

 

TransMountAfter_zpse4a6ca86.jpg

 

 

I've used it on a fuel tank as well with great results. The caveat is that the item must be completely submerged in the vinegar because steal will rust when in contact with the vinegar VAPORS. So, you must fill the tank entirely. Or, in the case of the mount pictured above, it was completely submerged in a container.

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Never tried white vinegar, but when I was looking into it I wasn't finding anything that showed white vinegar to be any where near as effective as apple cider vinegar. I have never diluted it - always used at 'full strength'.

 

Whatever you use it on will begin to surface rust almost immediately (minutes) after the treatment, so you should plan on some sort of inhibitor IMMEDIATELY after rinsing. When I did my tank I poured about a cup-full of WD40 into the tank, swirled around for a few minutes, and drained. That kept it clean until it was put into service.

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Unless you plan on always running 100% pure gas you will have up to 10% Ethanol in it.  Ethanol is nasty stuff and really hard on old cars that were not designed for it.  It is amazing how much, and how fast, Ethanol absorbs moisture.  Unless your tank is protected it will cause huge problems.  I suggest that you might see if there is a Gas Tank RENU dealer http://www.gastankrenu.com/ in your area that that could clean and coat your tank.  They did mine over 18 years ago and it is still holding up great.  

 

1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Replica

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