Tank Cleaning

[yooperrigged]

Has anyone ever tried E85 and some nuts and bolts to clean a tank with a little sludge on the bottom? TIA

[labrador-guy]

Ya me! The e85 will work as good as any other solvent but! It will take all the paint off of your parts washer. As for inside a gas can it depends on what is in there. E85 will do nothing for rust. It will cut the lard like stuff that sometimes is left in the bottom of the tank from years of setting. I like to wash a tank as good as I can then let it set to dry. Then get inside with my shop vaccume. I tape a piece of water hose to the end of my shop vaccume hose and a putty knife to a stick, Scrap and suck ti’ll you get tired. Let it set, then do it again. I made a contraption to attach a gas can to the wheel of my lawn mower. Threw some nuts inside, drove around the yard but that didn’t work so good. It would need about a week of steady turning to make a difference. Pressure tanks have a bigger hole to work with when you get the aluminum centers out. Lots of ideas for cleaning tanks. All of them require lots of work!

dale

[outbdnut2]

I used a bunch of nuts and Dawn liquid dish soap on a 1951 Buick car gas tank that had been dormant for decades. I kept dumping in a gallon of water with some dish soap and shaking it all around until I was dumping out clear water. Then rinsed with a little gas and let it dry thoroughly. It cleaned out the residue from gas gone bad, and the dish soap breaks down petroleum products. The nuts chipped away at surface rust. Due to baffles in the tank, it was hard to get all the nuts out, but that should not be a problem with an outboard tank. E-85 would have worked too, but water and liquid soap is cheaper and safer to work with, also not toxic when dumped out.
Dave

[yooperrigged]

Thanks for the tips. Now the real work starts!

[fastjohn]

It takes time, but ammonia works great for crud in tanks. Wood screws work better than nuts or bolts or gravel because of the sharp edges. For rust you can use vinegar and check it daily.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by fastjohn.

[reivertom]

Find some old square nuts…….lots of sharp corners.

[GLEN DEUTSCH]

Have to credit my wife for this one. Get an used gas cloths drier. Gas because then you won’t have to monkey with the electric coils.You can easily get one for free. Take everything off the tank . Use an old fuel cap, housing, etc and make gaskets to seal the tank. Put a couple pounds of drywall screws in the tank. Next you can add WD-40, soap and water,or whatever cleaner makes sense depending on what is in the tank. Pack the sealed tank with moving blankets or tarps to keep it in the center of the drum and turn it on. The drier will tumble out any dirt, rust, scale or residue leaving a 100% clean tank. No shaking. No Evaporust . No electrolosis. Used it on dozens of tanks. If there any pinholes in the tank, removing the scale will reveal them. You may have to reposition the tank to bring the screws to bear on different sides. Usually takes about an hour or two, depending on how bad the tank is.

1 user thanked author for this post.

opposedtwin

[tinkerman]

I bought one of the large
Tumbler/polishers at HF and want to tape a tank to the top of it AFTER filling the tank with the plastic star shaped abrasive and see how this works but I cleaned up the gummy tank I had BEFORE I bought the tumbler but I believe it will work great. They produce a lot of vibration

It's a jungle out there.

[seakaye12]

I use chain instead of loose nuts and bolts. Way easier to remove without leaving anything behind. I put my tank in the truck and let the motion and vibration do some of the work. Once I bungee-corded a small tank to the lawnmower. That mower vibrates a LOT! Seemed to help but in the end it’s a tedious process.

I have it on good authority that BRP Engine tuner makes short work of varnish and built-up crud in tanks. The stuff is expensive but I’m told that it can be filtered and re-used over and over.

[Monte NZ]

I haven’t tried it myself, but have often wondered how fixing a tank to a concrete mixer bowl with stone chips or old skrews etc would work …….and just let it run for an hour or so and then check to see how effective it was.

Monte NZ

[Author]

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