82 KZ/GPz gas tank repair

Aloha guys.

To make long story short, I have decided to make a permanent gas tank rust repair. I thought I did a pretty good job removing rust using some chemical, but rust has come back again. No, motorcycle is all apart yet, so I did not put any gas inside. Yes, I did coat the tank with motor oil, but maybe I missed few spot?

Anyway, what I planning to do is send the tank out to professional repair shop, have them remove the rust and have the tank seal with liner. Does anybody have any recommendation where to send it to? I know it's gonna cost me, specially shipping, but I been together with this bike/tank since my early 20's, so it does have some sentimental value to me, and it's very hard to find same tank. Yeah, been looking on evilbay, but still haven't seen one yet.

If you know any shop who does a good job, please let me know!

Evaporust works well. Do they sell that on the island? It's safe enough to flush down the toilet after use, but it can be reused a few times so don't do that right away. A couple of gallons will do the trick and not damage any paint on the tank. You just need to figure out how to plug the various openings.

If you are going to seal it you don't have to remove all the rust. Use a Evaporust, MSR, vinegar or whatever... and use a good two-part tank liner. You can do the whole thing yourself for less than $100 and not have to ship your tank. I only use Caswell . Don't use Redkote.
For the holes just use your sending unit gasket and make a plate out of aluminum. Same for the petcock.

Unless the tank is leaking, use a solvent to remove any oil, make up some plates and then fill it with evaporust or the like to remove any rust in the tank. Like Nessim said, it does not harm the paint except some reds have iron oxide in the paints.

Coatings are a band-aid for leaking tanks. IMHO. If it is clean with no junk floating around, does not leak, coatings are a waste of money. They seal any rust into the tank forever.

Thanks for reply guys.

But most of us here on the island, problem is not rust removal but the coating itself. I tried to go on Amazon, evilbay but all those places won't ship it here. Something to do with HAZMAT. I know surface mail can, but most places won't ship surface mail. They said they can't track it (at least that's what I hear every time I talk to the rep.).

Yes, I used evaporust and I still have three gallons of them. They are great stuff. And because I used this stuff, I know there's no hole in my tank. I did not have any leak. I just want to seal my tank permanently. Aside from wrapping the tank in a plastic wrap, tank will rust. I'm surrounded by ocean and salt water don't help the situation either.

I'll try the evaporust again just to see if I have anything floating around.

wow laulau. Aloha brah. Gotta be somebody local can handle no? I stay jealous, you must get poi on the table, broke da mouth ono kine. Aside from the good info on the interwebs, I would go talk story at the boat harbor. Not sure where you stay at, windward, leeward, but guarantee get action over there, every day something leaking.

I can certainly see your point on the rust and the salt water atmosphere. The thing with coatings is that they are hard to apply evenly and almost never end up the way they are shown in pics. Much like fast foods NEVER look like they do in the pictures.
The only time I have seen what looked to be a nice coating was some red stuff that a radiator shop applied. Which BTW, would be after they "cook" it out with whatever it is they boil radiators in. (removes EVERYTHING including paint)
At any rate, if you de-rust again (need to for coating it anyway), then keep the tank full of fuel, oxygen can't get to the metal to turn it into metal-oxide (rust).

I cleaned (remove rust) and sealed my fuel tank with a POR15 tank sealing kit 15 years ago. The fuel tank looks inside like i have done it yesterday.
Nothing wrong with it. You have to follow the the instructions: degreasing - rust removing with posphoric acid - cleaning with spirit alcohol - drying and seal coating.

Olajoe wrote: wow laulau. Aloha brah. Gotta be somebody local can handle no? I stay jealous, you must get poi on the table, broke da mouth ono kine. Aside from the good info on the interwebs, I would go talk story at the boat harbor. Not sure where you stay at, windward, leeward, but guarantee get action over there, every day something leaking.

Howzit brah. Miss the Hawaiian food? Me too. There's hardly any good Hawaiian food place we can go to, at least near-by, and most of the good food trucks are gone. There's couple left that keep the good 'ol atmosphere, but nothing like before.

As for the gas tank, I did call several radiator shop, but they all said they don't do motorcycle gas tank, some just said they don't do gas tank at all. I also called several motorcycle shops around, but most is for repair, and they don't do any gas tank unless it's for painting.

Guess it's the price we have to pay to live in paradise.

Thanks for all the input guys.

For now, I need to repair my DD Lincoln, so I can't work on my tank, but as soon as that is fix, I plan to put Evapo-rust back in and see if I can remove the rust again. First time I used it, it did a pretty good job. Guess I have no choice but to use Kreem to seal the tank.................

Ojisan rider wrote:

Olajoe wrote: wow laulau. Aloha brah. Gotta be somebody local can handle no? I stay jealous, you must get poi on the table, broke da mouth ono kine. Aside from the good info on the interwebs, I would go talk story at the boat harbor. Not sure where you stay at, windward, leeward, but guarantee get action over there, every day something leaking.

Howzit brah. Miss the Hawaiian food? Me too. There's hardly any good Hawaiian food place we can go to, at least near-by, and most of the good food trucks are gone. There's couple left that keep the good 'ol atmosphere, but nothing like before.

As for the gas tank, I did call several radiator shop, but they all said they don't do motorcycle gas tank, some just said they don't do gas tank at all. I also called several motorcycle shops around, but most is for repair, and they don't do any gas tank unless it's for painting.

Guess it's the price we have to pay to live in paradise.

I do. But enjoy any chance to meet people from the islands. I'm writing from the rockies, mile high city. Good luck with this project. I was watching the other project you was working on for along time zx7 on the other forum. Hope that one is going ok also. Aloha.

Yeah, I'm still working on the 7. It just every time I have a chance to work on that bike, something comes up. This time around was DD Lincoln LS water pump going bad and spew coolant all over in the engine room. So probably need to work on this next weekend/day-off as I need to get the parts from mainland (mail order as local stealership don't carry any LS parts).

Hopefully, I can get to the engine soon and find what's wrong with that motor. building two motorcycle at the same time sure takes up time,specially I need to get most, if not all, the parts from mainland mail-order.