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The reddish stuff looks like old gas residue, but it could be some form of old seal-coat. The corks, just like cork carb floats, do have a seal-coating, and if ethanol-gas mixture has been used, that attacks the seal coat and ruins it, and the cork usually sinks. There are two kinds of natural cork. One is open-cell cork and the other is closed-cell cork. I replaced a tank cork with a wine bottle cork once without sealing it and it sunk within a week, so it was open-cell cork. I would clean your cork off good, sanding if necessary to get all that stuff off. Then seal-coat it with either clear, hot fuel proof model airplane “Dope”, or with super-glue.
Dave
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brushed on super glue seems to work but just be careful with fumes that sometimes develop on the cork Ventilate properly and keep fumes away from the the eyes and don’t inhale the stuff !!
SG usually ends up on fingers so latex surgical gloves can help 🙂
Joining AOMCI has priviledges 🙂
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Thread got me motivated to go out into the other building and check on my nu-coated float test. Not much has changed.
A "Boathouse Repair" is one that done without having tools or the skills to do it properly.
Hey Tubs,
There was a message string here a few years ago about whether cork needs to be coated to resist gasoline. Somebody posted there are two kinds of cork, depending on the type of cork plant used. There is open-cell cork, and closed-cell cork, and no good way to tell which you have except to do what you are doing. Open-cell cork needs to be coated or it will eventually sink, while closed-cell cork does not. Several years before that post, I took a cork from a wine bottle and put it in a gas tank uncoated. It sunk in about a month causing the gauge to read empty, so it was open-cell cork.
Dave
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The old coating that you see on both tank and carburetor cork floats is shellac. The old shellac is not compatible with ethanol in modern fuel and degrades causing carburetor problems.
As others have stated, if the old cork is in good condition, then it can be scuff sanded and recoated. It is not necessary to remove all of the shellac because the new coating will seal it in against the fuel. Additionally, too much sanding will make the float volume less than original. I like to use two coats of dollar store original super glue with plenty of curing time before exposure to fuel mix.
For tank floats that are degraded, it’s very easy to make a nice new float. Just buy oversize cork stoppers at the local hardware store, center drill them and use a hand drill in a vise as a poor man’s lathe. I have used a paint stirring stick with sandpaper attached on the end to shape the float as it spins. Once setup it’s a good time to make some extras.
The last 90-degree bend in the float wire can be heated before bending straight to accommodate the new float. after sliding the new finished float on the wire, bend the wire back to 90-degrees without the use of heat.
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