Posted by gmharris [71.105.36.203] on Monday, April 28, 2014 at 12:41:37 :
In Reply to: Re: Well my motivation.. posted by Nick [99.100.212.49] on Monday, April 28, 2014 at 01:09:29 :
I used a 50/50 water muriatic acid solution mixed in a bucket then poured in. Make sure to add the acid to the water, not the other way around. Wear protective glasses and keep the solution off your skin.
Pour the solution in and let the thing soak overnight. Muriatic acid will remove all the rust given long enough. I would normally put some chain or something in the tank to help loosen the rust and dirt, but with baffles, this may not work.
I used Hirsch ethanol resistant coating. The key is to get 100 percent coverage inside the tank by slowly rotating the tank. The coating is thicker than water so you have to turn the tank slowly to give the sealer a chance to spread.
You are trying to get a very thin coating without allowing the sealer to pool anywhere in the tank. The Hirsch will leave a thin, almost transparent, hard coating if everything is done right.
I have a stock tank. Your bigger tank is going to be a handful, but one quart of Hirsch sealer should still be enough.
I have a string of LED lights in a plastic tube. I dropped the lights into the tank to get a better view inside. You get a better view if the light source is inside the tank.
I used a hot air gun to dry the tank. Place the hot air gun in an opening on the tank and let it run until the entire tank is warm and dried out. Don't do this before the tank is well washed out. A tank explosion will be very nasty and gasoline fumes can linger longer than you think. The tank must be dry before you put in the Hirsch sealer.
That may sound like a lot of work, but it is actually harder than that. I probably have about 20 hours (believe it or not) into this project. There's a lot of things to do like opening up the pickup tube, prepping and painting the tank, but getting the tank clean takes the most time. Mine had a shovel full of debris in it. I had to have several goes at cleaning it.
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