Posted by Tom in Indiana [166.198.45.43] on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 01:35:23 :
To make a long story bearable, I bought a '69 VW Beetle a few years ago. My stepfather had a '68 Baja when he and my mother first got together almost 30 years ago. He's finally going to retire, so I bought the Bug as a father-and-son project for us to spend time together on. It was very solid, with only a couple of quarter-sized rust holes in places that were easy to take care of the RIGHT way. When my father-in-law passed away, he left us enough money for me to purchase around $10k of crap to completely restomod the car, and to buy my '50 Power Wagon. For the last three years, the Bug has sat in the garage, waiting its turn. Onward...
My '50 came with dual tanks when I got it, and had a manual tank switching valve beside the seat, mounted to the floor. Nearly every time I drove the truck somewhere, it'd start acting like it was running out of gas. I'd switch tanks, and it'd clear up. It made no difference which tank I started out with- it'd eventually do the same thing. I rebuilt the carb. Added a fuel filter. Switched to an electric fuel pump. Switched to an electric tank-switcher-thingy. Replaced the entire fuel line. Same thing, still. So, I decided to drop both tanks and clean them out. BOY, were they full of crap! Basically, from that day, the truck hasn't seen the road but once (fuel fed from a plastic gas can), and that was last summer. I tried unscrewing the fuel line outlet from one tank, and ended up stripping it somehow... it just turns the entire assembly on both the inside and outside- were they not designed to be unscrewed? Now that I had totally ruined the sealing properties of thw tank, I just threw both tanks under the Bug in the garage and sulked about it for the past year.
Last weekend, I got bored and pulled the NON-stripped-out tank out and just started stripping the dirt/rust/paint off of it for something to do. I got it completely stripped, and figured "Ah, heck. That POR-15 I bought for the Bug a couple of years ago is probably no good by now. Instead of throwing paint on the tank that'll scratch all to crap as soon as I try to put it back under the truck, I'll try the POR-15 out on it". So, I Marine Cleaned, Metal Readied, and coated the tank yesterday. It brushed on like wood stain, but leveled out GREAT. The only thing that sucked was that pollen basically coated the entire tank and it looks like it was painted on a dirt road in Hazzard, Kentucky on a July afternoon during a dust storm. I decided to not waste any, so I coated some brake lathe parts as well. The Marine Clean/Metal Ready stuff is expensive, and the lathe parts had been soaking in molasses, so on them, I just rinsed off the molasses and coated them with the POR-15, skipping the two prepping products. Molasses has phosphoric acid in it, anyway... that's all the Metal Ready is, really. I'm really curious as to how the entire ordeal is going to turn out.
What have you guys experienced with POR-15? I've heard horror stories as well as people saying it's basically indestructible. I used the 3M abrasive discs to rough up/strip the surfaces. That ought to be prep enough, right?
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