A couple of people have asked, so I'll pass on my recent experience with
cleaning a rusty gas tank.
First off, if the tank has more than just rust in the bottom, the kit from
Eastwood doesn't give you enough Phosphoric acid to do the cleaning. The kit
makes about 2.5 gallons of solution. You can buy some more solution from
Kano labs, but by the time you get enough to fill the entire tank you've
spent $50 or so.
When I discovered my Eastwood kit wouldn't do the trick, I checked into
finding phosphoric acid in quantity. Unless I wanted to buy in 55 gallon
drums I was out of luck. A couple of places sell 5 gallon buckets, but for
over $100.
I finally decided to have a metal cleaning place strip the tank with
chemicals. $75 later I have a completely clean and pretty tank.
Unfortunately, I also have a 1/8" diameter hole in the tank bottom, drilled
by the metal cleaning company to allow air to escape. I'll weld that up
before painting, or I imagine a welding shop would do it for $5.
After about $50 for the Eastwood kit and $75 for the cleaning, plus about $10
for paint, I have about $135 in this tank.
If you'll look in Hemmings motor news, you'll see that a couple of vendors
sell MGB tanks for about $135.
So...If you want the nice Hammerite finish, have the tank stripped and paint
it yourself. If you just want a new tank, it's probably less expensive to
buy new. I would say that after seeing the kind of gunk in my tank, the
stories I hear about cars sitting for ten years and being restarted should
probably be followed by stories of clogged carbs and tank intake screens.
Sean "Paying for experience" Johnson
'79 MGB
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