Ship in a bottle. Remember them?
I built one as a young lad with my Dad. He was into sailing, seafaring and such but also mechanical engineering. On any given spare weekend he and I would build models of a wankel rotary engine or a working, see-through V8 engine or of popular tall ships,
Ahhh. Those were good years.
I didn't realize it then but this was the beginning of my fascination with cars and motorcycles. In later years our model building on the dining room table would shift out to the workbench in the garage on the full scale versions. Nothing was off limits. If it could fit into the garage then it was fair game for being wrenched on.
It occurred to me just recently, that KZombie's rise from the grave has only been possible due to those formative years with my Dad, building and investigating. Tearing apart something to see why it failed and then figuring out how to fix it. Often he would let me do it even when it resulted in failure. He must have been clenching his teeth, as I fumbled my way through some repair of an electric motor or rebuild of a carburetor but he knew it was needed. I had to fall down to learn in the long run.
This past week, I think I realized something: All those hours of him nervously watching this young boy at the dining room table with model glue and at the workbench with wrench or tool paid off as I'm sure my old man was praying for. Thanks Dad! You really are my best friend!
Happy Father's Day to all of our KZr Dads and sons of Dads who shared their love of all things mechanical with them!
Okay, now I gotta start a new entry for what I was going to relate - work over the past week on KZombie.
I started the week off with electrolysis investigation for rust removal from the fuel tank which as many may recall, I thought was metallic brown from memory but come to find out it was from so much rusting that my fading memory of 10 years ago made me remember it as brown. :laugh:
Anyway. Here's my first setup:
Yup. Just like all those EweToob videos show... Except there's a ton more work involved to get to this point not shown by all those young guns with gas tanks wired-up in their backyards and that is getting the electrode that goes inside the tank to be suspended perfectly so as not to touch the tank.
Easy! Right?
Um. No!
A royal freakin' pain in the wrist is what it is. Seriously! I spent probably close to an hour of diddling with this, trying that, reshaping the sacrificial anode (electrode, wire, whatever) to fit inside and then hang there isolated from the tank. Here's a close-up of my secret to success:
Yes. That's right boys and girls. I cut up a perfectly good throttle grip to make a rubber insulator that fit snugly inside the fuel filler neck and then ran the anode wire through it AND a plastic rattle can lid with some mods to fit over KZombie's tank neck.
Cool! Right?
Um. No!
DO NOT EVER TRY THIS METHOD AT HOME KIDS!
Do you see anything obviously wrong with this approach? I didn't. I was pretty damned pleased with myself when I finally got to hook up the battery charger and walk away, sweat pouring down my forehead and forearms from the extreme humidity we've been suffering through here in central Texas.
So this approach was a complete failure because I only thought about the electro-mechanical issues of suspending an electrode inside a cage that it couldn't touch and didn't put any thought toward the chemical reaction issues that are taking place...
About an hour later.
Me, all pleased with myself. Electrol-er-oh-sizing the heck outta my tank down in the garage. I was combing my hair after a cool shower and getting ready to take my pooch for her evening walk. Staring into the mirror, comb in hand, I hear "Thump..." from downstairs. "Stupid dog." I think to myself. - You know when your dog behaves like a well, I guess, dog. She musta lost her balance and thumped her foot or head or something.
So I continue combing, trying to make sense outta the mop on my head when I hear it again "Thump..... thump... thump...." :huh:
I step down the stairs and peek under the ceiling at my dog to see she is sleeping quietly in her doggy bed by the fireplace and then I hear it again as I'm watching the sleeping dog lie - "Thump" :blink: WTF?
So, I go out to the garage, following the sound that is getting louder.
There across the garage, on my workbench is my tank, rusty colored, saline solution bubbling all over the dang place, running down the tank and across the workbench, down onto the floor! :ohmy:
Yeah, that happened. Stupid is, as stupid does. :blush:
I quickly ran to the battery charger's plug and pulled it from the wall outlet. Whew!
In case any of you, like me, sat in the very back row of chemistry classes, paying more attention to the cute blonde girl outside of the window instead of the chalkboard where the teacher was explaining the finer details of what happens when you pass electrical current through a solution comprised of water which ultimately separates the H
2 from the Oh and releases all that hydrogen from it's oxygen...
Yes. I was trying to, without thinking about it, make a hydrogen gas trap between my insulator-throttle-grip and the rattle can lid. Hydrogen. Hmmm. Isn't like hydrogen ... EXPLOSIVE?
Quick! Open the garage door and grab the pooch and head out the front door for the evening doggy walk before the wife gets home and notices anything odd! :whistle:
Take two:
So, more freakin' diddling hours later. I managed to get that sacrificial anode wire suspended inside the tank
without the throttle grip-seal-gas-trap. Breathing a sigh of relief, I let'er rip for about 3 hours while nervously watching the television with darling wife. About 11pm I stepped outside and hadda a peak. The sodium carbonate solution still managed to bubble all over the place but the process was working:
That's a video capture of the tank's internals.
It was working! Yay for electrons doing what electrons like to do! :woohoo:
Only problem is, the reaction was limited to the area immediately around my hand-fashioned electrode, which was simply some bailing wire twisted up and bent into a single length that reached from filler neck backward to about 3" short of the back/inside of the tank.
The results were kinda' disappointing considering all the hoops I hadda jump through to get to that point. All the time spent figuring out how to hand a wire inside the tank without touching the tank and the running around town to find "sodium carbonate" (NOT sodium bicarbonate! - which it turns out was discussed in another chemistry class I musta' slept through).
So the concept works but my implementation was underwhelming at best.
Take three:
So another day. Another attempt... This time I made a crazy, freakin' difficult to imagine, multi-pronged, electrode that required fitting and fitting and testing and trials. Basically, a four pronged probe with ends that reached out to all corners of the tank, counter balancing each other so as not to touch that tank internally for fear of shorting out - "ZZZZZZZzzzzzzttttttT!" and possibly frying my ancient, dumb battery charger.
I twisted-up lengths of bailing wire again and finally twisted the four probes into one neat but ugly knot at the filler neck where I connected the charger's positive lead to.
And it worked!
Worked great even! :woohoo:
I left it to run for almost a whole day out in the driveway as I wrenched on KZombie in the garage. Randomly checking on it to see the meter of the charger was acting normal and not showing signs of dead.
It ran this way from 9am until 9pm and when I finally shut it down and went to extract my hydra-headed anode, all I pulled out of the tank was rusted bits of wire, no longer than a couple of inches. The anode had essentially disintegrated into nothing. The bailing wire it seems was just not sufficient for that many hours of chemical reaction. I probably could have stopped it around 4pm in the afternoon given what I removed from the tank at 9pm. :dry:
Take four:
Oh yeah! That's what I'm talking 'bout!
Look at that!
Doktor Von Frankenstein would be proud!
I decided to forego the problems with suspending electrode of flimsy wire inside the tank and just submerge the whole dang thang! :evil:
I soldered the cathod connections directly to the bare steel of the tank.
I created a maze of heavy iron and steel anodes that surrounded the tank, inside, underside, side, overside.
These anodes were going bombard the crap outta of the tank from every angle and with two cathode connections soldered to the tank at both ends. Well, A freakin' superhighway of electron flow was about to commence!
An hour or so later
I actually made a video of this in process and you can see the bubbling, watery, electronee, action in all it's goodness. When I plugged in the dumb charger, instantly a cloud formed between the two big 10" saw blades and the sides of the tank! Awesome! :woohoo:
The worn-out, old, files I used also started their efforts and bubbles started forming throughout the solution.
Turns out the bubbles were mostly because I used "Arm and Hammer, Washing Soda" instead of straight-up sodium carbonate. So I got some sudsy washing bubbles but as the wife pointed out later - "this is the best your ratty old bike has ever smelled!" :laugh:
A few hours later:
Super! More bubbles! More rusty goo! Awesome!
In short (no pun intended) this setup worked so dang good. I was impressed. So where's the results picture?
Yeah. About that...
More chemistry class we all shoulda' been paying attention in.
Sodium...
Sodium (anything - carbonate (good) - bicarbonate (not good)) and raw metal. Well, anyone that lives in the north east knows what happens when salt meets with your automotive pursuits - Rust!
Wha?
But isn't that exactly what this whole experiment was supposed to remove?
Yup.
Problem is, the second, that raw, clean, metal tank hits the air outta the solution, it begins flash rusting all over again. :ohmy:
Additionally, my tank was still sorta' painted when I dunked it into the electrocution tub from hell.
When I pulled it out several hours later (8 hours total time BTW) all the paint still on the tank had begun to bubble-up. You see, even the teeny rusty pimples under the paint and primer were no match for my pyscho electron bath. However, all the paint lifted off too. I used a flat razor and simply scraped across the whole of the tank and big flakes of paint fell off like they wanted to get away from that tank.
The rusting began instantly too. I hadda wash-off the sodium solution and fill the tank with water from the garden hose just to rinse it all out from inside and in less than 30 minutes my tank looked almost as bad as when I put it into the Frankenstein tank:
Janet! Dr. Scott! Janet! Brad! Rocky! Uh! :laugh: :laugh: When Eddy said he didn't like his Teddy, you knew he was a no good kid.. :laugh: :laugh:
So. I ultimately had to hit the whole tank with a wire wheel on a drill and zap all the flashing rust from the surfaces. This worked out to be a good thing anyway because all the heavily pock-marked skin held rust in the deeper crevices and that hadda go!
Within an hour, I had sanded, wire-wheeled and primed with etching primer the whole tank:
I dunno if you can see it at this resolution but look closely at the tank skin near the Kawasaki badge mount and you can see the pock marks left from rust removal ala Frankenfurter :silly:
Here's the tank afterward:
Pretty! NOT! Those rusty saw blades are THICK in rust too. The oxide layered up upon itself to nearly 3/8" thick. Crazy!
So that's electrolysis ladies and gentlemen!
I think it's cool. Certainly fun experiment. Probably really useful for cleaning up old tools, hammers or whatever. Smaller objects that are easy to tank-dunk.
I think it's completely a waste of time for motorcycle tank cleaning. Waaaay too many hours sunk into this now and ultimately, I had to resort to mechanical rust removal - flap discs and wire wheels, just to counter the flash rusting from sodium exposure. Guess what the inside of the tank looks like now?
I dunno. I was too afraid to look. I rinsed it out and let the tank dry off. Then masked it up and started flap disc'in and wire wheel'in so I could get it into etching primer coat quickly. I thought about spraying oil inside the tank but that's counter productive to priming, painting or even body working.
Thus, I will ultimately have to fill the tank with some metal etch cleaner and probably sealer anyway.
Fun!
Oh and while all this chemical reactionary schtuff was going on, I did manage to further the situation with KZombie but this will have to wait til later. More pics. More progress. I'm gettin' stoked now good people!