Trying to remove fuel tank liner

I had the tank coated, so this is all my fault, but I'm still pissed off. I had a radiator shop do it for me, and I have gotten good results in the past. This time they did not clean the tank out before coating and the result was not so good. That was several years ago, They are no longer around and I'm not sure what product they used, the coating is black so maybe Caswell?

I am stripping the tank for new paint, so I tried to remove the epoxy liner. I used methylene chloride "aircraft stripper" and that does work - sort of. It turned the epoxy into bubble gum. I tired again with a bunch of rocks rattling around in the tank and rinsed it out, then I tried an MEK rinse. I even had some naval jelly ( phosphoric acid) and splashed a bunch of that inside the tank, let it sit for a while, and then rinsed it out.

I got some of the epoxy out, but I am left with a bunch of black goo I need to remove. Any suggestions?

God, you got to be careful mixing chemicals. Have you tried Acetone? That stuff is supposed to be impervious to gasoline so I have no idea what kind of solvent would work. Maybe a heat gun to melt it? Just guessing.
Steve

I'm only doing one thing at a time, so I'm not mixing. The stripper I had is some old school stuff, methylene chloride, methanol and benzene, and it ate through my heavy nitrile gloves. I felt my fingers starting tingle while I was working, threw off the gloves and washed my hands. I have a mild chemical burn on my right hand.

I did rinse with acetone to clean out the paint stripper, no dice there. MEK worked better, but it leaves the epoxy behind. I was doing some reading and drywall screws are supposed to help scrape the gunk out. After today I'm about ready to look for another tank...

it turns out the place that did the coating for me has moved and are still in business. I called them and the owner wanted to look at it. He told me it is an industrial product and the only way they have been able to remove it is in a caustic tank. He offered to clean it out for me and was pretty apologetic about it being a problem. He has been using the same process for decades and has only every had a few cause problems. He offered to make it right, and that great but it will take 3 weeks.

So a bath in hot caustic soda is about the only thing that can remove this stuff.

Red Devil Lye. That's the stuff they make Meth with. Had a class on it.
Steve

I've stripped out the old liner in several tanks and it's a real pain in the rump. Just as you have experienced, the chemicals soften the tank liner but getting it to release from the tank is another matter. I've had the best results using aquarium rocks and paint stripper. You need to shake the living hell out of the tank with the rocks inside to get the liner out. MEK also works well. The entire process takes days upon days of loading the chemicals, shaking, draining and inspecting, filtering the chunks of paint out of the sauce and repeating. You need to use a mirror and flashlight looking through all the various tank openings to make sure you got 100 percent of the old liner out before moving to the next step. Don't let the radiator shop coat the tank again until you inspect the inside to make sure all the old liner is out. I'm very interested in hearing if they can get the liner out with their caustic tank. If so, I'll just take the next tank I get that needs to be done to them since it costs a lot of money in chemicals, plus lots of time to get the tank properly clean if working on your own.

I used MEK and some chain on a tank once. I'd slosh the MEK and chain around, then dump it out, filer the MEK to remove debris and do the process over again. Took a while, I should have let the MEK soak 24 hours first.

People think they need to coat a tank because of surface rust, which is WRONG! Any rust can be cleaned out with rust remover. You should only need a coating if there are leaks from rust. Even still, I'd rather weld it up then put that snot in my tank.

After all that work only to be hung up by something stupid liked this. :whistle:
Steve

The problem with using something like a chain inside the tank is it won't get into all the little nooks and crannies like the aquarium rocks will. Getting the aquarium rocks out once done is another matter though...

I've used a handful of large sheet metal screws too. I think as long as there's an "abrasive" in there it's better than nothing at all.

My local bike shop were throwing out an old Bandit tank because the liner had started to seperate. I borrowed the grinder and hacked it up for the 'aircraft' type tank filler top thing for my project. I had to take an old chisel to it to get the liner off


This is tough stuff! You could make a fairing out of it!!





The good thing here is I could get at it with a hammer and chisel, not something you can do. Unless you cut the bottom out you could clean it up and weld it back in. A bit extreme maybe but it would give you the chance to fix the holes that led to tank liner in the first place.
Good luck with it.