Once everything was together I decided it was a good idea to clean this old tank before I took it for a ride. So I filled the tank with Evapo-Rust and left it overnight.
The next day I checked on the tank and it was mostly empty. That should have been a sign that something was afoot but I noticed that the gorilla tape and stopper had come loose from the petcock threads so I thought it was just a tape failure.
Flushed out the tank with some acetone and then back on the bike for a ride…I started to pour the premix into the tank and then suddenly it sounded like a mini rain shower! My tank is officially a spaghetti strainer!
After tossing a paint tray under the bike I managed to stop pouring gasoline on my garage floor. (Insert swearing here) The tank is definitely free of rust…sadly it’s bottom half was mostly rust but it’s shiny metal now! After draining the tank for real I coated the inside with a layer of oil and sealed the whole thing up with plastic wrap.
The good news is that I have parts for a second TSM and the tank is already clean…and maybe doesn’t leak? After a quick test (off of the bike) being leak free is confirmed. Hop on the bike go around the block and everything is right with the world…well mostly…this tank looks terrible…its got some dents and is spray painted black.
Having never painted anything other than pipes and frames I had no idea how to make a tank look nice. So I outsourced the work to my buddy Larry…and he managed to find metal under a total of 8 different coats of paint!
What I didn’t realize was, he wouldn’t get any further than that…its weird, he has other things to do other than unpaid work for me…go figure. Larry did have time to poke around and find the perfect color green!
Bondo is easy…and surprisingly fun once you figure out the timing of mixing and smearing. I also liked sanding it…little did I know I was soon to be in sanding hell.
I build a tiny paint box and made a lazy-susan with a big bearing and I’m shooting paint. This is where everything goes down hill. Too much paint, too fast, too much dust, this isn’t as easy as it looks…what am I doing!!! After stopping because I’m terrible at painting, I started watching some YouTube tutorials…which told me what I already new…I’m impatient.
After much slowing down and lots of sanding I got the paint right!
Now that I had painting figured out, I decided I should fix the holey tank too. The only thing better than one TSM is two.
The tank needed the rust removed the rest of the way and low and behold the was a big hole in it to go along with all the little ones. Patched things up with this
and then bondo to smooth things out. A little epoxy to clean up the cracked plastic parts and then paint. Oh and stripes!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BS2l9ikhmz6
Once both tanks looked good they both got a full can of 2K epoxy coat to make them gas resistant and read to go.
Note: I intend to Caswell the inside of the striped tank so I can be sure it won’t leak again. That adventure is TBD.
Next up…back together again but you still won’t be my friend!?