Rust in Tank

Yeah, I got a good tip.

Follow the directions! LOL! I know you dump it in the tank and let it do the work, then put the tank on its side and different angles to get the rust on the sides too.

BZ

 

you gotta use the clear tubing...vaccume hose doesn't work well... the clear stuff is for "water" type tubing. about 3/4 of an inch in diameter..should work....

 

So I've had the stuff in the tank for a few days now.

12 hours on 1 side....12 on another. 1 full day with the tank sitting normally....another full day with the tank upside down.

I poured the stuff out and back into the bottle. It has gone a light yellowish color (like diluted pee or apple juice) to a dark brown.

The problem now is I cannot get all the fluid out. There's a good chunk of it still in the tank and the way the VF500 tank is designed I can't get it out.

I think I'm going to have to siphon it.

 

You have to rinse the tank out with water too slowbird.

Then, go to your local autoparts store and pick up one of those little hand siphon kits. That will get the last little bit out, then take a hair dryer and shoot some warm air into the tank hole for a bit to help dry the inside out.

You are good to go!

BZ

 

Once the Evapo-Rust does its 'chelation' process and you rinse clean with water what do use to seal the surface?

 

Awww....what a pain.

The blow dryer is a good idea. Guess I better start crackin.

Thanks again BZ!

 

I don't want to use any sealer in the tank again.

I did on my old tank and it messed everything up. It made filling it up a lengthy process of:

-Add gas till it come sup the neck
-Shake tank and watch gas bubble down
-Repeat steps 1 and 2 till tank is full.

I'm just going to make sure it's always full.

 

I have heard of people using Heet to get the water out of their tanks.

 

Got some pics of the old tank and the new.





Even using the Evapo-Rust and rinsing out with gas there is still bits of crap in there :-(

 

Apologies for the revival of ancient threads. But slowbird, did you ever manage to clean your tank of rust? Would you recommend using this evapo-rust stuff?

 

It certainly got a lot of the surface rust out. It wasn't magical or anything but it helped.

How bad is your tank?

 

I need to get a small mirror so I can look inside but at first look, the inside looks fine. The outside bottom edges has a few pinhole leaks and a slash leak and a hole leak. I'll put some pictures up sometime.

I'm planning to repair it with epoxy+fibreglass kit I picked up at a local Canadian Tire.

 

I had pinholes at the bottom corners of my tank. They were repaired before I bought the bike but leaked again. I paid to have the tank cleaned, repaired and coated and it leaked a bit over a year later.


I then paid to have a guy cut out the corners of the tank and weld in new pieces. When he was done he showed me all the rust he pulled out and the metal he cut off. What a mess. There was no fixing that. Too much rust.

 

Whew, I think mine is in worse condition than yours was. I'll put up some pics as soon as I can although that might end up being the weekend. I'll see how much free time I get tonight.

 

Thank you for the post and photo. Were they able to repair the corners and repaint them by fading the red into the existing paint or did they have to repaint the entire tank?

 

I just got the rust out of my tank. I used BB's and hot water. I put 3000 BB's in and a gallon of hot water. Shook it up till I was tired, drained it, repeat....for 9 times. After the 9th time, I removed the BB's and put in 5 gallons of white vinegar, let sit for 24 hours. Drained and flushed. 32 oz of 91% alcohol, swooshed around, and drained. Let air dry for 2 days. Found a tank sealer at a local John Deere dealership (Bill Hearsch brand sealer), it's ethanol resistant gas tank sealer. Put that in and swooshed it around. I didn't have any pinhole leaks in my tank, but this process sure took out alot of rust. You will probably never get all the rust out unless you take it and have it cut open and re-welded. By that time you may be better off finding a new tank. Good luck with the process.

 

The problem with the BB method is that it's just NOT a realistic thing to do with the VF500 tanks. (Maybe all VF tanks?)

The problem is that there are soooo many little small pockets of space in the tank where fuel, sediments, debris (and BB's if you put them in there) will sit and most likely get stuck. You can't just shake the tank and everything will come out of the Petcock hole. The hole is not at the lowest or rearmost part of the tank.



As you can see from this pic the Red circles and arrows are where everything likes to sit...and these parts are mostly at the lowest and/or rearmost parts of the tank. (Green is Petcock outlet)

These parts are also where the tanks like to rust. Not all Coatings will make it in these spots. The metal we cut, from my tank, in these spots were coating free.

If the Gas Cap hole was straight through to the tank you could just turn the tank upside down and empty out the tank but there is a plate and some kind of neck that prevents this too.

Finding a tank in good shape seems to be one of the hardest things to do. Maybe I should repair my old one and sell it.....make some good coin.

They managed to make the corners rust free but the rest of the tank was still bad. The coating job that was done before was also done poorly (Maybe due to the horrible tank shape)

The tank did need a new paint job and I was quoted about $250 to match the stock colors. I found the tank I currently have on Ebay for $125 iirc and I scooped it up fast. Much cheaper than repairing and painting the old tank.

Also the coating seemed to have killed some of the capacity of my tank cause I can go a bit further on my current tank then I did before.



You can see the old tank in the background and the new to me tank closer to the camera

 

I love informative stories!

I'm probably better off not bothering to get all the rust out of my tank then and just seal the leaks that I currently have then. As long as it doesn't leak, I'm fine with it. I'll just keep a lookout for a more repairable gas tank, haha.

 

Having to repaint the whole tank to repair the dreaded lower corners is a bummer...I wonder if there is a shop that would tackle the corner restoration without the need to repaint the complete tank?

Price is one factor but also I am not sure anyone out there makes a factory correct tri-color wing for the '84/'85 'blue-on-top' tanks.

 

If you are going to use your tank and you know it is rusty, try and install a fuel filter.

I was struggling to figure out where to install one (Since our 86's do not come with Fuel filters) so I hooked up 2 fuel filters after the split.

Almost everywhere I went to get the tank repaired the first thing they said was they could NOT guarantee the paint.

The guy who did the corner cutting and welding for me was under the impression I was going to repaint the tank so he didn't care too much about it. It came back very scratched and a bit dented.
I wasn't too happy about that.