LEAKY Tank - Help Needed

there is only one POR15 tanks sealer, the only options you have is $$ what you will pay for it
Read up on the product and directions, its easy and you can totally do this
 
this is the kit they sell, but you can buy the sealer without the cleaners and derusting liquids and get that stuff yourself
http://www.por15.com/POR-15-Motorcycle-Fuel-Tank-Strip-Repair-Kit_p_60.html
 
Kamn said:
there is only one POR15 tanks sealer, the only options you have is $$ what you will pay for it
Read up on the product and directions, its easy and you can totally do this
Click to expand...

Looks in mirror - "I can do this, I can do this" A week later runs away crying after losing the battle of the carbs.

Not sure why one came up that much more expensive but I got it now. Good looking out!
 
The POR 15 kit is great. I doubt you will save much buying just the sealer and DIYing the acid and detergent. If you want to get the gas out completely first, empty the tank as best you can and then pour in a pint of alcohol. Swish it around and it will blend with all the fuel in there. pour it out and add another pint of alcohol and also a pint of water. Swish, empty and there you are. You can pour in some more water and something abrasive and shake it around to remove most of the rust. I like pea gravel, but people use chains, screws, etc also. That will give you a good head start on getting the inside of the tank ready. After that, phosphoric acid should be great. Don't substitute another acid for the phosphoric unless you know what you are doing. The phosphoric is pretty benign and any rust that stays attached to the steel will be converted and not be an ongoing problem. I use hydrochloric acid often enough as it is ultra aggressive and nearly instantaneous, but it is fairly dangerous and requires an immersion bath to neutralize it as well as having some other difficult issues. If you clean the tank as described first the POR 15 kit should work faultlessly if you follow the directions. It's not a bad idea to patch the pinholes with some tape or a dot of silicone or other sealant on the outside to keep from having a mess with the sealer. You can remove the patch after the sealer dries. Also be super attentive to the fuel transfer pipes if your tank has them. The sealer will stop them up permanently. I wait until the sealer is starting to dry and take a piece of stranded electrical wire - like #12 or #14 gauge and run it through the pipes and then again every so often as needed as the sealer hardens up.
 
jpmobius said:
The POR 15 kit is great. I doubt you will save much buying just the sealer and DIYing the acid and detergent. If you want to get the gas out completely first, empty the tank as best you can and then pour in a pint of alcohol. Swish it around and it will blend with all the fuel in there. pour it out and add another pint of alcohol and also a pint of water. Swish, empty and there you are. You can pour in some more water and something abrasive and shake it around to remove most of the rust. I like pea gravel, but people use chains, screws, etc also. That will give you a good head start on getting the inside of the tank ready. After that, phosphoric acid should be great. Don't substitute another acid for the phosphoric unless you know what you are doing. The phosphoric is pretty benign and any rust that stays attached to the steel will be converted and not be an ongoing problem. I use hydrochloric acid often enough as it is ultra aggressive and nearly instantaneous, but it is fairly dangerous and requires an immersion bath to neutralize it as well as having some other difficult issues. If you clean the tank as described first the POR 15 kit should work faultlessly if you follow the directions. It's not a bad idea to patch the pinholes with some tape or a dot of silicone or other sealant on the outside to keep from having a mess with the sealer. You can remove the patch after the sealer dries. Also be super attentive to the fuel transfer pipes if your tank has them. The sealer will stop them up permanently. I wait until the sealer is starting to dry and take a piece of stranded electrical wire - like #12 or #14 gauge and run it through the pipes and then again every so often as needed as the sealer hardens up.
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Any idea where I can get phosphoric in store? I'm in Lowes right now and they do not have any. They have CLR, Lime-a-way, and Zep. Doesn't sound too great. Any suggestions?


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Home Depot has it in the paint section. Lowes does not carry it.

6dfa3a82-2631-469a-ad51-bb6f7c88611f_400.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using DO THE TON
 
Prep Etch and a torch! one fish to another... no sealer until you are sure you cant clean and braze the pin holes, that tank is a solid tank with only a few fail spots... where is the suspected pin hole/leak.
 
Tune-A-Fish© said:
Prep Etch and a torch! one fish to another... no sealer until you are sure you cant clean and braze the pin holes, that tank is a solid tank with only a few fail spots... where is the suspected pin hole/leak.
Click to expand...

It's on the right underside very close to the lip of the tank. Not sure if that's very helpful but it's all I got!
 
"under side" is sweet!

Clean it good with the prep etch (phosphoric acid) AKA Deviant Juice and 1/4" lag screws... shake it good... twice, rinse good with water and alcohol, let it dry then drill the hole progressive 1/8" bit to 3/16 to remove rusty feathered edge cut or punch if you have a small patch and braze it over the hole.

These, they have lots of pointy edges and are easily removed with a magnet.

mJhXlusSg3Z8DxfFLn9cNpQ.jpg
 
Tune-A-Fish© said:
"under side" is sweet!

Clean it good with the prep etch (phosphoric acid) AKA Deviant Juice and 1/4" lag screws... shake it good... twice, rinse good with water and alcohol, let it dry then drill the hole progressive 1/8" bit to 3/16 to remove rusty feathered edge cut or punch if you have a small patch and braze it over the hole.

These, they have lots of pointy edges and are easily removed with a magnet.

mJhXlusSg3Z8DxfFLn9cNpQ.jpg
Click to expand...

So let me make sure I'm getting this right - clean tank out (already did this and cleaned/flushed with warm water and simple green multiple times). Emptied tank as best as I could but there is still some water washing around that I can't get out. Thinking of getting a blow drier and leaving it in to dry the inside. Once it's clean and dry (does it need to be dry for the phosphoric?), poor in phosphoric and shake a good bit. Now did you say put in those screws to shake it around with as well? Much like a protein shaker?

The hole drilling... I cannot condone this behavior yet, because of my inexperience, nor can I condemn this. But it is such a tiny hole, no drilling will be done on my end.

In other news, electric are all running and the engine turns over. This is a good start
 
The phosphoric will be fine with water, in the end the alcohol will mix with water and dry it all out. if not comfortable brazing a radiator shop could help with that.
 
Tune-A-Fish© said:
The phosphoric will be fine with water, in the end the alcohol will mix with water and dry it all out. if not comfortable brazing a radiator shop could help with that.
Click to expand...

Alright good deal. I'm on it.

Rubbing alcohol? Lowes is still living in the prohibition era and doesn't sell rubbing. All I've got at the house is cheap drinking alcohol... if you consider Ron Rico drinkable.
 
thefish said:
Alright good deal. I'm on it.

Rubbing alcohol? Lowes is still living in the prohibition era and doesn't sell rubbing. All I've got at the house is cheap drinking alcohol... if you consider Ron Rico drinkable.
Click to expand...

I use isopropyl alcohol (rubbing) but denatured should work too. They should have isopropyl in the cleaning aisle and denatured with the paint stuff.
 
They had the denatured but it was a huge container so I passed on it. I'll check that other aisle for rubbing but if not, I'm sure most other places that are similar will have it. Pretty common stuff
 
I've had good luck with drywall screws and mag wheel cleaner to remove rust and acetone after final rinse to prevent flash rusting. I've also had good luck with the Caswell sealer, its two part epoxy flows right while coating and dries nice and slick.
 
Alright, finally able to get back at it. Have everything I need and plan on finishing up this tank tonight. My question is what steps do I take immediately after draining the phosphoric and water from the tank? If I weren't using a sealer afterwards I'd go ahead and throw some water and baking soda in to neutralize the acid, then put gas and stabil in to make sure no flash rusting occurred. But because I'm using a sealant, I'm unclear of what steps to take in between.

Anybody know what should be done here?
 
You shouldn't have a lot of trouble with the phosphoric acid, but it won't hurt to neutralize it anyway if you want. You do want to dry out the tank very quickly after rinsing/neutralizing though. That is where the alcohol comes in. If you want to neutralize, get a quart of hot water, and add some baking soda AKA sodium bicarbonate. Add enough to make it cloudy but not so much that there is a bunch of undissolved powder at the bottom. After thoroughly rinsing the tank, pour it into the tank and shake it. Rinse with clean water. Drain it as best as you can, and then take a pint of denatured alcohol and pour it in and shake it. Alcohol mixes readily with water so it will combine with the little water left and you can then pour it out. It also evaporates quickly so your tank should be nice and clean and dry after a short time. I blow compressed air through for about a minute and then let it sit for half an hour. You should be ready to use the sealer straight away. If your pin holes are really that - which means tiny - you likely can simply place some tape tightly over the hole (s) on the outside of the tank and use the POR 15. The tape will keep the sealer from leaking out while it cures, and being on the bottom you can orient the tank so the hole(s) are at the low spot after coating the rest of the tank. That way the sealer will end up being thickest over the hole(s). Brazing is of course better, but if you don't want to destroy the paint in the damaged area, and the hole(s) are small, the POR 15 will span the opening. It is super tough when cured.
 
jpmobius said:
You shouldn't have a lot of trouble with the phosphoric acid, but it won't hurt to neutralize it anyway if you want. You do want to dry out the tank very quickly after rinsing/neutralizing though. That is where the alcohol comes in. If you want to neutralize, get a quart of hot water, and add some baking soda AKA sodium bicarbonate. Add enough to make it cloudy but not so much that there is a bunch of undissolved powder at the bottom. After thoroughly rinsing the tank, pour it into the tank and shake it. Rinse with clean water. Drain it as best as you can, and then take a pint of denatured alcohol and pour it in and shake it. Alcohol mixes readily with water so it will combine with the little water left and you can then pour it out. It also evaporates quickly so your tank should be nice and clean and dry after a short time. I blow compressed air through for about a minute and then let it sit for half an hour. You should be ready to use the sealer straight away. If your pin holes are really that - which means tiny - you likely can simply place some tape tightly over the hole (s) on the outside of the tank and use the POR 15. The tape will keep the sealer from leaking out while it cures, and being on the bottom you can orient the tank so the hole(s) are at the low spot after coating the rest of the tank. That way the sealer will end up being thickest over the hole(s). Brazing is of course better, but if you don't want to destroy the paint in the damaged area, and the hole(s) are small, the POR 15 will span the opening. It is super tough when cured.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed help!

So here's what it's looking like, could you tell me if this sounds right?

1) go through the phosphoric steps
2) mix some water and baking soda into tank then rinse
3) put some alcohol in there (I'm going to use rubbing) and let it mix with water and dry quicker
4) use hair blow dryer (I don't have a fancy air compressor) to get it completely dry
5) tape up pinholes and pour POR 15 (entire can) into tank and slowly work around entire tank
6) let tank sit overnight
7) BOOM... tank GOOD TO GO

What do you do about the petcock hole and filler hole? I'm going to take them off, but not sure which is the best way to cover them. For the phosphoric steps I was going to simply keep the gas cap on and duct tape something over the petcock hole. But what about the sealer?
 
and before the hair dryer you can push in a micro fibre towel to soak up the water, remove towel and blow dry it
 
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