This morning Steve at the Radiator Doctor called to let me know that my
gas tank was ready. It had been left in the boil-out tank over the long
weekend and had been given an acid bath to remove as much rust as
possible. So, during lunch today I drove in to San Jose to pick up the
tank.
Major disappointment upon arrival. There was my tank sitting in one
corner of the shop with a coat of black radiator paint on it. Well, I
suppose this was partially my fault since I had neglected to tell them
NOT to paint the tank. Steve assured me there was no problem since they
could easily strip the pain off. I thought about this a bit. Maybe I
could paint over the part of the tank that's exposed in the trunk with
silver paint. I asked Steve what kind of paint they had used. Water
based paint. Ugh. I told him to go ahead and strip it. He agreed but
suggested that it should be painted with something to seal it. He even
suggested bringing whatever kind of paint I wanted to use to the shop
and they would repaint it for me. Looking over the tank, I could see
painting wasn't their specialty and decided I'd paint it myself. I
could see rust spots showing through the paint here an there. These
spots had been "neutralized" according to Steve. I peeped inside the
tank with a flashlight to see if it looked any better there. In all
honesty, it looked about the same as when I had left at the shop. No
doubt it's cleaner but it didn't look any less rusty inside to me. To
summarize, I think I wasted by my time and money. I suspect I could
have done about as well myself. I'm not sure what to do about the
paint. Originally the entire outside of the tank had been "tinned" with
solder and unpainted. I'd sort of planned on leaving it that way. My
idea was to wire brush the few exposed rust spots and to tin them as
well. Now I'm not so sure I can. Steve said that all the chemical
soaking had left the tank a purplish color. What I suspect this means
is that all of the tinning was dissolved by the acid and the bare metal
was treated with a rust neutralizer. I'm almost afraid of what I'll
find when the paint is stripped off. Sigh. Why is it that so may
"experts" don't seem so expert outside of the tiny niche they're use to
dealing in. As fellow snake owner John Nygaard once told me, "Ya gotta
know everything yourself".
Roland
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