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I used undiluted Ospho to clean mine, let it thoroughly dry, rinsed with water and let it dry again, then coated the insides liberally with Hirsch gas tank sealer. On my Henney’s huge tank it took nearly a gallon. It’s now basically a plastic tank with an original wrapped around it for looks!

As Howard said, reproductions for the 1951-1956 tanks are available at a very reasonable cost but not so for my Henney unless I wanted to spend over $1k for one.

I'm hopeful we will not need a replacement tank, but it is nice that they are available still. I bought one for my Panama and it's been great. But my tank was far worse than Morticus's. So hopefully dissolving all the junk on the inside is all that we need to do.

Replacement tanks have gone up $100 or so....close to $500 now. Not an inexpensive thing. But if we continue to have problems then that is the direction we may need to take.

-Kevin

Fuel tank is out. I drained the new gas we had just put in it, and it was surprisingly orange.

The fuel sender works, but is very crusty. We'll clean it up in the sandblaster, or otherwise, and see what we can do. The inside of the tank is covered in rust particles. The exterior seems to be in good condition, but the inside has obviously sat for some time. Right now I have several gallons of vinegar sitting in it, and I'm shaking it and sloshing it several times a day. I'm curious to see how much it cleans up with just that.

If that isn't sufficient I'll throw in some chain and really agitate it up. Once the rust is cleared up we'll throw in some acetone to dissolve any leftover varnish.

We haven't talked about sealing the tank yet. If we do a coating, we'll probably go with Hirsh's stuff. Otherwise, I've heard of guys just throwing in Marvel and coating the inside of the tank to prevent flash rusting. Probably not a long term solution though.

-Kevin

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With all the rust and then the cleaning I suspect the terne coating on the steel inside the tank will be destroyed. Without some kind of sealant over the bare metal the rust will come back quickly. Doubt just using the Marvel oil will be enough protection.

I agree that it is time to etch and seal the tank. I definitely would not use a sandblaster on the sender and, as new ones for 1957 and similar Ford are a direct and inexpensive replacement, I would do that and set the original aside.

I just fixed that issue Don. Try again.

I've done at least five tanks with the POR15 gas tank cleaner/etch/sealer over the past 15 years or so and had zero issues with it. Pretty cost effective system.

The last tank I did on my '40 I took to a radiator shop; they opened it up, cleaned and repaired leaks, sealed it and painted the exterior. Looked like new. (Still haven't put any fuel in it though!)

Unfortunately the radiator shops around here (only two within two hours) don't clean out fuel tanks anymore. So we're stuck with doing it ourselves.

Vinegar has been sitting for two days, and I've agitated the tank whenever I walk by it. The rust and scale was loosening but not coming completely off. So I grabbed a handful of large nuts and bolts, threw them in then agitated the tank for a good 15 minutes. I drained everything out (using an old towel to catch the debris and leaving somewhat clean vinegar in a bucket).

The amount of debris that came out was really surprising. The picture shows much of it, but there is was a lot more after I took it. And this is only from the bottom 1/3 of the tank.

I was impressed by how much had been cleaned from the floor of the tank. There is quite a bit of loose scale in there still. We'll need to flush it several times when all is done in order to get the last of it out.

-Kevin

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Once clean, you'll have to etch it thoroughly with something like Ospho which will remove any remaining rust and leave the surface ready for sealer. It gives the surface a protective phosphorus coating too.

Will the fuel tank sealers stick to Ospho? I know you can paint over it after 24 hours, but I wonder if the sealer would be different. I would hate to have the sealer fail.....that would be much harder to clean up versus rust flaking.

-Kevin