Kreem gas tank woes

guavatone wrote:

stange thing is that when I did my first muriatic cleanse, the rust by the top opening cleaned and was all grey, Now... I have a muriatic and distilled water almost full to let it soak and when I came back an hour later the metal by opening flash rusted a tad.

That's because the muratic/water solution at the filler nect is being exposed to oxygen in the air.

Should I bother leaving it to sit with muriatic or shoud I just do it in less time with a few muriatic flushes and try to get to the phosphorus stage (no water) quickly to avoid any flash rust?

I should think by this time that the tank is clean enough to do a 10 minute muratic/water treatment/flush/blow dry/phosporic treatment with no problems.

almost there, oh the wood is working like a charm but not on the sensor holse so I put the sensor back in - hopefully it won't disintegrate!

Don't know - never treated a tank with sensors before, but have to believe it won't do them any good. Better get the tank cleaned, flushed and treated ASAP.

Hey Guys,
The old wife's tale about rust begetting is just that, or is that tail? Never mind, I don't want to go there. The reason folks used to believe that rust begat rust is because rust is porus and can hold moisture which will certainly begat more rust.

The purpose of using the phosphoric acid after the muriatic acid is this: The dilute hydrochloric acid leaves clean iron exposed to the oxygen in the air. Because the surface of the iron (steel) has been cleaned chemically it is actually very rough, at least at the microscopic level. At this level it's surface area is actually much larger than the surface of the tank that you might measure. Because the iron is so thouroughly exposed it's got no protection and will "flash rust". On the other hand phosphoric acid eats away less of the rust and iron but it leaves behind Iron Phosphate, which is not as quickly oxizided as clean steel. A thin coat of iron phosphate will give you enough time to get your tank dried out before more rusting occurs.

Once the tank is refilled with gas the rusting will, effectivly, stop. You can assure this by occasionally treating your fuel with ethanol. Be careful with these older bikes because the natural rubbers in many of the gaskets don't withstand acohol very well. I've never had any problem adding a whole bottle of "Heet" before a whole day of riding. But if I add "Heet" to my tank and park the bike I'll be lucky if I can open the gas tap without breaking off the handle.

Check out my article about rusty tanks.

KZCSI

Post edited by: KZCSI, at: 2006/05/13 21:02

I got to the blow dry stage but when I finished I saw rust on the bottom that had a line as if it rusted below the water/muriatic surface. Now I am doing another pure muriatic flush -hoping this will cure the last of the rust.

this just sucks -I feel I should have continued to ride before this happened since it seemed to make everything worse.

My fuel gauge is gone now, I was having trouble sealing that side and thought it was better to have no gauge than a rusty tank.

Does anyone know if those gaskets are standard rings for the fuel since mine is 20% bigger after the muriatic?

Post edited by: guavatone, at: 2006/05/13 23:34

KZCSI wrote:

.... On the other hand phosphoric acid eats away less of the rust and iron but it leaves behind Iron Phosphate, which is not as quickly oxizided as clean steel. A thin coat of iron phosphate will give you enough time to get your tank dried out before more rusting occurs....Check out my article about rusty tanks.

Guavadude - *How* can this be worse in the long term? Your tank was rusting itself into a sponge, and the particulates can't be doing your fuel filters (if any), jets, rings, valve seats and anything else they come into contact with any good.

It's a problem you'd have to deal with sooner or later anyway - and later means getting yourself another gas tank. This way, you have a chance of saving the one you have.

In the above quote, KZCSI says to dump in the phosphoric treatment BEFORE drying the tank. Give it a shot.

Stick with it.

too late, well actually I ended the blow dry cycle after I saw your post and went right to the naval jelly.

this time it didn't seem to bad after the water-dry. mayve I took too long to set up my tank for drying or I didn't get enough water out. that's probably why the rust was below the line - my blow dryer may evaporated some of that water after 2 hours.

my head is spinning from all these chemicals, time to sleep.
-take care folks

Post edited by: guavatone, at: 2006/05/14 00:09

Oh, one last thing, KZCSI's article says to flush with water after phosphorus and pterosour dsays accetone. I'd rather use acetone since I wantr no chance of rust. KZCSI why do you have a different method and is it safe from flash rushting?


sorry to be a pain but I want this done finally.

Either way, the idea is to limit the amount of time the raw steel is exposed to air in a humid (water laden)environment.

Since you're having such a time of it with flash rusting while flushing with water, it's worth a shot to flush with a bit of gas after your muratic treatment - that also should retard the flash rusting.

I'm done with the muriatic, my tank is line with phosphorus. gas after phosphorus? accetone?

Here's a link to my article. I think it all covered there.

kzrider.com/content/view/22/11/

Good Luck
KZCSI

I think I left the phosphorus in too long since I have darker colored metal and some black spots on the the middle divider. The directions make it seem like a piece of cake. well, I think I'll go thru the process on more time today and not soak the phosphorus too long.


Thanks for putting up with my S#$t and coaching me a bit.

At this point you need only a quick wash with muratic acid then flush it out with water, follow with a five or ten minutes of phosphoric acid. I would suggest that you flush the phosphoric acid out with more water and then dry it as quickly as you can with a hair dryer.

Bill

Well, 20 nitrile gloves(down to one glove from a 50 pack) 5 gallons distilled water, naval jelly, 2nd bottle of muriatic and 20 tons of patience( now very little left) later...

-now I wait for the blow dry cycle (pun intended)
I ended up doing 2 muriatic cycles, 1st with water/distilled and second pure muriatic
-the metal looked good and solid grey from the spots that I could see ...I tried the dental mirror but it didn't seem to do much for me

I am hoping this step will get rid of any small rust sediment possible

-flushed with water
-phosphorous for 8 minutes
-distilled water swirling to get out main phosphorous
-water hose gun to make sure the rest was gone
-blowdrying now

my plan next is
1. accetone
2. gas
3 light oil



There were strange flakes on metal after my last blow dry - is this avoidable or does it matter?


I hope this is it and I can rejet this baby and do some ridin'