Richard_Brown
Senior Member
Offline
Ok, after not having time to mess with this car after purchasing it 2 years ago, well maybe 3 now. I had the carbs rebuilt by an ex Boeing engineer who did an amazing job. I pulled the tak last week, took all of 10 minutes, I was expecting the fuel line to be hard to get off or rusted in place but no problem at all. I found I do not have a vent tube on my tank like I saw in many diagrams? This 65 tr4a sat for something like 10 years before I got it so the fuel smelled like varnish and the tank was rusty inside with chunks floating around.
I initially flushed it all out with water, then used "the works" toilet bowl cleaner about $1.50 a bottle at Home Depot. I had read on a motorcycle forum that this stuff works really well. In Fact it did, I then flushed with soapy water. Then used Phosporic acid with water and flushed around, at this point it was pretty clean.
I had already purchased the Por 15 tank kit, so I started with the Marine Clean wich helped get a bit more gooey varnish out, went through the rest of the kit, then used a hot air gun mounted to a pole so it would stay in place inserted in the filler hole and let it run and get the tank very hot so it would dry ( por 15 says it can not have a single drop of water). By the way, you will see many photo's of people wrapping duct tape and things around a tank to close the holes when shaking it around to clean, I did not used nuts and bolts or screws to help but had it been much more rusty, maybe I would have. I found at ace hardware, plumbing test caps for about $3.00 one over the fuel filler and one to plug the sender unit hole, these worked really well without spills or any mess.
The tank sealer went in and after draining the remainder out I ended up with about 3/4 of the can back. its been drying for 8 days while I await the parts and new sender unit, meanwhile sanded the outside, primed and re painted it gloss black and now its like new in and out ready to go back in.
I am sure many of you hesitate this process and I questioned doing it myself but here in Seattle a radiator place wanted something like $125 or more to boil it out. I later found a reproduction tank that actually was styled exactly like the original for around $225.00, had I not already invested the por kit I might have saved several days of work and just went with a new tank although I am really happy with the end result.
I initially flushed it all out with water, then used "the works" toilet bowl cleaner about $1.50 a bottle at Home Depot. I had read on a motorcycle forum that this stuff works really well. In Fact it did, I then flushed with soapy water. Then used Phosporic acid with water and flushed around, at this point it was pretty clean.
I had already purchased the Por 15 tank kit, so I started with the Marine Clean wich helped get a bit more gooey varnish out, went through the rest of the kit, then used a hot air gun mounted to a pole so it would stay in place inserted in the filler hole and let it run and get the tank very hot so it would dry ( por 15 says it can not have a single drop of water). By the way, you will see many photo's of people wrapping duct tape and things around a tank to close the holes when shaking it around to clean, I did not used nuts and bolts or screws to help but had it been much more rusty, maybe I would have. I found at ace hardware, plumbing test caps for about $3.00 one over the fuel filler and one to plug the sender unit hole, these worked really well without spills or any mess.
The tank sealer went in and after draining the remainder out I ended up with about 3/4 of the can back. its been drying for 8 days while I await the parts and new sender unit, meanwhile sanded the outside, primed and re painted it gloss black and now its like new in and out ready to go back in.
I am sure many of you hesitate this process and I questioned doing it myself but here in Seattle a radiator place wanted something like $125 or more to boil it out. I later found a reproduction tank that actually was styled exactly like the original for around $225.00, had I not already invested the por kit I might have saved several days of work and just went with a new tank although I am really happy with the end result.