On Fri, 4 Jul 1997 JAMES_S_WALLACE@HP-Canada-om1.om.hp.com wrote:
> Item Subject: cc:Mail Text
> Hi John,
*kaff* I'm using me dad's account. Malcolm. :)
>
> I took the gas tank out of my TR3 last night, and it had a little bit
> of something sloshing around in it that was definitely not gasoline
> (or petrol either). It was red, and so far three people have not been
> able to identify it by smell. It's somewhere between Varsol and
> industrial hand cleaner.
It could be very, very, very old gas. Rust in the tank will make
whatever fluid inside red. Old gas has a somewhat familiar smell, find
an ancient lawnmower and take a sniff :)
> Anyway, I'm wondering what's the recommended way to clean the tank
> out. So far I can't really tell if there's rust in there, but there's
> at least sludge. (The car's been parked since 1970). It's hard to tell
> what's going on through the small "viewing ports". Anyone got a home
> remedy?
Take the tank outside and use a mirror to reflect sunlight into the tank
thru one port, and look thru another. You should have 2 fairly big holes
in the top (one for the filler, one for the level sensor)
To clean out the inside, get a bag of marbles (or ball bearings), add
some clean gas, and shake vigorously. Then pour the whole works through a
sieve, if you want, to see what sort of guck you had.
>From what I can see, it may take some time to knock off all the rust (you
can't get it to sparkle inside using marbles, but it will remove any flakes)
If you have trouble getting marbles (I lost mine long ago), nails are
supposed to work, as are nuts & bolts... I figure the glass in the
marbles won't be too likely to cause a spark though.
-Malcolm
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