Wayne,
I used the slushing compound a few years ago, it does a good job of coating the
inside and plugging really tiny pinholes in the top of the tank, but there are
a few things to watch for:
On the end of some pick-up tubes, there is a plastic filter to keep ping-pong
balls, etc, from being sucked up. The slushing compound (looks/acts like thick
paint) can coat this filter, restricting your fuel pickup.
In some gas tanks, there is a kind of inverted "bowl", about the size of a
half-basketball. This is to allow the gasoline to expand without coming back
out the filler neck. see cheezy ascii art below.
--------------------------------------------- <--top of tank
\ /
\ /
\ / <-----------bowl thing with opening at bottom
\ /
\___ ____/
--------------------------------------------- <-- bottom of tank
The top of the bowl is sealed to the top of the tank, so the only opening is at
the bottom. The problem is that the slushing compound won't slush the inside of
the bowl.
Add these two points together, and you get my former problem: Crud from the
inside of the bowl thingy would come out, and plug up the half of the pickup
tube that the slushing compound hadn't already plugged. Top it all of with the
internal baffles that make it difficult to see anything of interest inside the
tank (unless you use bailing wire and bits of a broken mirror too see around
corners), and you have a _really_ annoying problem that didn't go away until I
dug out the $150 for a new tank. Which, by the way, has no interior baffles or
bowl thingy, and holds 14.2 gallons instead of the previous 12. :^)
If your tank has interior corrosion, no bowl thingy, and you can keep the
filter from being covered, the slushing stuff works very well. Otherwise, be
careful. If the inside is clean, I wouldn't worry. Just keep the water out, and
you'll be fine. (in high humidity areas, dump some rubbing alcohol in every so
often, it adsorbs the water and carries it through the fuel system.)
Hope this helps,
James "not messing with the gas tank no more" B.
'71 MGB
'71 LeSabre
compound
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