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Cleaning out Gas tank BE

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jaegzie

jaegzie

Jedi Hopeful
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On my BE i am looking at getting the fuel lines and all of that stuff hooked up. I have the tank out of the car and there was quite a bit of debris, rust and other stuff in it. I got quite a bit of it out but I can still here things rattling around. Is there a way to clean these out with out having to take it in or buying a new one. The car has sat since 75 so there was quite a bit of stuff. Any ideas or if you can point me in the direction that would be great. TIA
 
There are rust removers, etching products, and POR-15 to coat it, but if you've got a lot of scale in there you'll probably always have bits inside. Check the top of the tank where it fits up against the bottom of the body. Mine had developed pinholes there and made it useless.

Are there any reproduction tanks in plastic? Looks like someone could manufacturer them fairly easy. Sure they wouldn't be original, but you would at least have a choice, and would probably cut down on all the rust and crud that gets in our fuel systems.
 
I took my tank to a radiator shop, and they cleaned it out for a reasonable price (can't remember how much offhand).
 
In the past I have had the fuel tanks cleaned out by radiator shops, but here at the coast I can not find one within 100 miles. What I did was literally "boil it out". I had the BE tank off the car with the sending unit out of it. There was a great deal of junk in the tank so I filled the tank with water and put it on top a a gas burner. This is one of the burners you use to heat a big pot to deep fry fish in. It is a single burner and is fed by a large propane tank. I boiled the tank for 30 minutes. I brought it up to a rolling boil. This really cleaned out my tank. I flushed it out with lots of fresh water and followed that with two flushings with a gallon of gas each time. That dried it out and then I sloshed some oil in the tank to prevent rust. Drained that very well. When I installed the tank it was very clean. I did not coat the inside which many recommend. I might do that next time.
Charlie
 
There is a raditator shop right in my town, i didnt price it but I figured if there was an easy way to go about it without too much extra cost i would go for it. I will give the boiling water a shot first see how that works. Thanks, I figured for the $80 for the por15, I might as well take it in to the radiator shop and have it done. But I may as well try the water thing first, worst case is I take it to the shop after the time it takes me.
 
The traditional method is to throw in a handful of a) gravel or b) nuts and bolts, to increase the cleaning action when boiling. I've seen it done on the top of a BBQ, as well.
 
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