gas tank repair

i have this old (1972) gas tank that probably hasn't had fuel in it for 20+ years...how safe would it be to repair it? it has small pinholes and one dime sized hole on the back of one side that the P/O tried to seal up with some concoction. would welding this be safe? the inside is rusty. i cannot find one of these tanks anywhere, so repairing it would really help me out. what options do i have? (its an old cb175 honda tank). thanks for the help folks.

My first choice would be to try to find one in better shape on EBay, or elsewhere. But since you say you haven't been able to find one, looks like your only option is to repair it.

I resurrected an old tank in similar shape. Inside was VERY rusty and full of varnish. PO had tried to repair some dents by drilling about a dozen holes in the tank to use a slide hammer to pull the dents. Then he just Bondo'd over the holes. :blink:

I took it to a body shop, and they welded up the holes, and didn't charge me anything. :woohoo:

Next, I poured some muratic acid in the tank with a handful of nuts (not the edible kind :silly: ), put a rubber stopper in the opening and strapped it down tight with a belt. I then triple-bagged it with plastic garbage bags, then wrapped it in a thick blanket and stuffed the whole thing into our clothes dryer and let it run on air-fluff (no heat) for an hour.

When I took it out and opened it up, the inside of the tank was clean. I then used a tank liner solution, just to be sure. I then filled the dents with bondo, sanded, and painted the tank. Turned out great.

maybe a mod can move this to the paint or project section, it may get more attention there


you can repair the tank, I would take it to a radiator shop and ahve them boil it out, it will clean the paint and some of the crap inside, then yo can see all the bad areas, if it has rusted out from the inside then there is going to be more weak areas in there, find them first and repair like skyman has done

Post edited by: BSKZ650, at: 2007/12/24 14:38

I had very good luck with the POR-15 cycle tank kit. My KZ250 tank was in very rough shape internally and now it's rust and leak free. I plan to use POR-15 again to clean out and seal my GPz550 tank in the spring.

Post edited by: SIKZ250, at: 2007/12/28 22:15

what if i used a tin based solder and a butane torch? could i "braze" the holes closed? most of these are pinholes and small holes. then i could use a tank sealer to finish up. anyone ever tried it? i am having a hard time finding someone with a tig setup. i am afraid my 110vac mig welder will burn thru.

I initially went to a welding supply store and told them what I wanted to do. They suggested that I try using some silver solder with a propane torch. I tried it, but could not get it to flow across the holes properly. Granted, I am an amateur at this, so I didn't really know what I was doing. And, the holes I was trying to plug were about 1/8" across.

That's when I took it down to the body shop, and they welded it for me.

Yeah, I am with SIK, I have used the POR-15 method with top results.
Cheers
Tony

SIKZ250 wrote:

I had very good luck with the POR-15 cycle tank kit. My KZ250 tank was in very rough shape internally and now it's rust and leak free. I plan to use POR-15 again to clean out and seal my GPz550 tank in the spring.<br><br>Post edited by: SIKZ250, at: 2007/12/28 22:15