Help! Best way to stop rust from behind emblem?

Sadly my tank has started rusting from behind one of the Kawasaki emblems As soon as I saw I removed the broken paint, cleaned it up and added some.... I don't know the English name but some kind of paint that can also be used on top of rust.

Now, what is the best way to stop it from spreading? It has already spread above the emblem (behind the paint), which is how I noticed in the first place, so grinding it all down would mean a new paint job which I'd rather not do to this tank (the one in my avatar)

Remove what rust I can behind the emblem where the original damage is, heat it up, paint over behind the emblem and hope for the best? :dry:

If it's just rusted behind the emblem on the red area, a good body shop "should" be able to grind out the rust and repaint just the red. Definitely take care of it before you have gas leaking out below the emblem.

Keep your bike out of the rain and when washing the bike keep water off the tank. In my experience with old cars and bikes, the only way to treat rust is to completely remove it.

This is a common water trap on these and a lot of tanks rust out here. The extent of the rust often gets worse when you start stripping it down to bare metal. I had a nice GSX tank with a badge pinhole that ended up on the scrap heap, the metal was so thin and pitted it was beyond repair. The internal tank sealants don't seem quite as good as advertised.

To stop it spreading keep it dry and maybe put a layer of grease or petroleum jelly over it, or red oxide / zinc primer which will look worse.

Tanks can be welded, I've has this done it needs a specialist that can weld thin metal and appreciates the obvious safety implications...the tank is filled with CO2 usually.

You have to expose the rust and clean it off. Rustoleum has fish oil in it to prevent rust. I used it on my car wheel wells. I cleaned the rust, sprayed silver Rustoleum on it, then the matching silver paint.
Steve

There's this stuff called Evaporust which is a chelation agent instead of an acid like naval jelly. It really works, but not on everything. It's also water based, so it shouldn't harm paint or anything. In my (limited) experience it will completely remove powdery rust in one soak. However, removing deep, flaky rust will probably take an awful lot of the stuff over many applications.

Tyrell Corp wrote:
To stop it spreading keep it dry and maybe put a layer of grease or petroleum jelly over it, or red oxide / zinc primer which will look worse.

That's what I was thinkin too ....... maybe a little gun grease and keep it dry ?

Yes, prep and primer will make a mess of what looks like a nice tank, the damage has been done, just about stopping further rust and hoping that it is repairable when respray time comes around. That is such a common rust spot, the other being sometimes the seams at the bottom of the tank.

Thanks guys. I'll see if I can keep it down. Otherwise get only the red part painted if possible since the rest of the tanks is nearly spotless.

Thinking more about this, some vinyl graphics will cover this area, some have cut outs for the tank badges, others don't.

So if you could prep and flat it, you might be able to hide it under new graphics. Your prep is vital here as any bumps will show through. You'd probably need to redo the tail graphics as well to match the new with old,