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General Category >> Rubber Side Down! >> gas tank rust and sludge
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Message started by victorbsa on 02/24/14 at 07:50:54

Title: gas tank rust and sludge
Post by victorbsa on 02/24/14 at 07:50:54

The 87 savage I purchased is pretty much going to be just a parts bike. I drained the eng. oil and about a pint of tar came out. No wonder cam chain broke. I would like to paint the fuel tank and use on my good bike. It is pretty crummy inside.. Have some kerosene in it rinsing. If I put a good fuel line filter on it will that be good enough to stop rust from damaging my good low mileage end?

Title: Re: gas tank rust and sludge
Post by old_rider on 02/24/14 at 08:07:07

I know that Dave had a post about how to clean a tank, but I can't find it at the moment. I'll look around, if Dave doesn't come back before I can find it :).

Found it!

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1386849349

Title: Re: gas tank rust and sludge
Post by groupus on 02/24/14 at 11:13:52

I just cleaned out the tank on my old goldwing using The Works toilet cleaner. It worked very well and was very inexpensive - $3.50 for 2 bottles. The wing has a 5 gal tank under the seat and I only used one bottle mixed with a gallon of water. Sloshed with some nuts and bolts, dried, and then sloshed with marvel mystery oil to prevent rusting until I could get some gas in it.

It took about a day vs vinegar which did nothing in a week. I plan on using the other bottle on my savage's tank. It's worth a try before you attempt some of the more expensive/involved processes.

Title: Re: gas tank rust and sludge
Post by gizzo on 02/24/14 at 14:44:56

I remember an article a year or two ago in Classic Bike mag on cleaning the rust out of an old tank. They put a few handsfull of fish tank gravel inside, sealed up the filler neck and fuel tap bungs, packed it in cardboard and put it in a cement mixer. Sounds violent but as the pics showed, the cardboard packing stopped it tumbling about in there, the only thing moving was the gravel sloshing about, chipping away the rust. After an hour or whatever, the gravel's drained out, vacuumed away and the inside of the tank looked pretty shmick.
The inside of the tank probs should be dry to do this.

Title: Re: gas tank rust and sludge
Post by Art Webb on 03/12/14 at 00:14:22

A guy on my rebel forum did the same trick but using nuts, wrapping the tank in an old quilt, (taped of course) and running it in the dryer on no heat