Aloha!!
It's been a while.
I keep on doing more and more on the bike.
1. Took the muffler off to see if it had any holes that cause back firing.
2. Decided to take rear tire off to check the brakes
3. Seeing the tire was off, I decided to clean the rim up and give it some personal touches.
4. Then I thought, maybe I'll repaint the tank, cause paint is bubbling up. I got all the paint off, and it turns out it is extremely rusty underneath paint.
I put phospo on it. and sanded it all nice and smooth.

Got busy with work, and looked in tank today only to see that it started rusting inside from sitting without a cap on for a few days!! AAAHHHHH!!
So what should I do about this? Will the rust go away once I put gas in it?
Should I put phospo inside and swoosh it around to coat the rust?

Gee... are you taking your bike apart?  Kinda like me

Rust in the tank is always possible.  Steel and water vapor.  That's all it takes.

If your tank is completely empty and dry (and gonna stay that way for awhile), then spray some WD40 around the inside and stick an oily rag in the filler hole to keep out bugs and stuff.

The biggest problem with tanks is trapped moisture.  It settles in the bottom and causes rust where you can't even see.  So the idea is to allow the tank to breathe.  Leave the cap off so that weather changes inside and out are the same.  

When you go to use it again, a little WD40 won't hurt a thing.  Just add gas.

PS - if your tank has gas in it, drain it out and put it in your car.  You want the tank empty and dry.

Islandwahine,
  Living in paradise is not always a paradise.  

Gasoline expands and contracts with the daily temperature changes.  At night when it contracts, it pulls air into the tank (nature hates a vacuum.....).  Since you live on the islands,  It's pulling in humid air and possibly slightly salty air.    That's why for longer term storage you should fill the tank ; or drain,  dry, wd-40 it then seal.

If you are re-doing your tank, it would be advisable for you to coat the tank.  I'm sure the cycle shops over there have kits to do this.

I really like POR15  because it can also fill pin holes.  They have a tank kit available online (clean & seal).   If you use this stuff, heed their warning, don't get it on you skin,   it sticks really, really good.
see: http://www.por15.com/

If your bike was a California model & "stock" you would have less of a problem because of the canister setup.

T-Mack  I just took a look at the website...will that stuff work with constant contact with gasoline?

Thanks guys!!
The tank is still empty, and I've finished putting on primer and several coats of paint. (same metallic blue). I did the same to the 2 side covers. I found some cool stencil designs and copied them into MS Word, resized them and printed them on the back of some lightly sticky contact paper. The tricky part was cutting out the different pieces of the design, but it went ok.
Stuck the contact paper on the side covers and spray painted a different color over it and peeled the contact paper back off.
Amazing!! I'm getting pretty excited here!!
Now I'm not too afraid to start on the tank.
The design color is silver, and I'm hoping it can handle Goo-Gone, cause a little bit of the contact paper glue stuck to the paint.
"Talk" to you guys in a few days!

Savage_Greg wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:


Yeah, it gets into the 60's and low 70's there...brrrrrrr, break out the sweaters folks  

rigidchop wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:

Never noticed that, but then I don't seal tanks all the time either.  Maybe it was just bad preparation, because the stuff I've seen has been pretty darned hard.

i dont know if it from bad prep or what, but i have seen a few, the job that was done on my chopper, was sub par, i'll be using the por 15 from now on.