With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

also tank prep

2010 February 23 13:27

I also worked on tank prep over the weekend.  Last year I removed and sealed my gas tank, in hopes of eliminating cruddy stuff coming from inside the tank and getting rid of gas vapors.  The sealant is great, but in the process of applying it some of it got on the outside of the tank, including the area where the tank sump seals against, as shown here:

First I scraped off the bulk of the stuff with an Xacto knife

Then I sanded the area to smooth a flat spot for the sump plug to seat against

While I was working on this, I also got into the tank with scrapers and removed the carcass of the old tank screen seal

Between the sanding and getting the bits of old cork off the inlet pipe, I ended up with a bunch of small fragments of stuff and sand and grit in the tank, that I could hear moving around.  It's like a box puzzle; you have this box with all this stuff trying to tilt it so it comes out the one hole in the bottom of the sump.  Well...after a while I decided I was doing it wrong, so I sprayed water into the tank to wash the stuff out...which meant I needed to dry the tank.  First with the shop vac

(Since this is a classy blog I will not make any jokes referencing "Mega-maid").

Then finally drying the tank in the sun by taping a (running) hair dryer on the inlet port and putting the roll of duct tape partially over the sender hole to restrict exit flow.

Stay tuned for pictures of generator/alternator pedestals.