So I turned on the heater Friday evening. The picture shows a second heater behind the radiator from which I only used the fan to get some circulation going in the garage. I can't use them together as it will blow my main fuse (only 10 Amp).
On Saturday I started the dérusting but nothing starts without coffee
I ordered a new fuel gauge as the old one did have a connection issue and the sealing rubber had shrunk like all other rubber parts on my bike. So I cut off the floater and reinstalled it to close the hole...
...and I used duck tape to cover the petcock hole.
Next I threw a bunch of drywall screws into the tank, am using these because they have sharp points and the fact that they are metal so I can remove them with a magnet. I've read recommendations to use gravel but I think I would have had a hard time removing them afterwards...
For the acid I used 2 bottles of cleaning vinegar which is a bit stronger then regular vinegar, it has 6% acidity.
I closed the filling hole using a lid from some jam jar and next the physical fun started with ongoing shaking, turning, leaving it at rest for a while (while I regained my breath) and redoing all of this several times during some 2 hours. What came out after the treatment was a very smelly brownish gunky sort of liquid so at least the cleaning seemed to have worked
I guess I have been very thorough as during the shaking the tank started leaking again through several new holes which I covered up with some more duck tape.
Some of these holes were very tiny, I guess the metal became too thin on certain places as you can tell in the following picture. There is a pinhole but the whole area around it is showing signs of deep rust.
Since there was no time to bring the tank to my friend for another round of hard soldering I decided to solder all holes myself, in some cases I used a thin sheet of copper (
brass-lamella?) for more structure.
Next I mixed the two components together and while stiring it I noticed it was pretty thick, not really as a liquid I mean. I only had 15 minutes in total so after 2 minutes I poured it in the tank and after closing it started to slowly rotate the tank. The whole procedure is a bit weird, you can only imagine how the coat is flowing inside the tank as you can't see what it's doing...
After 15 minutes I opened up the holes and let out the excess coat which wasn't much at all. Next time I either will use a larger amount of coat or maybe use some thinner to make it behave more like a liquid. When I opened the filling hole I noticed that I missed a few spots so I used the excess mixture to cover those as well. I initially concentrated on covering the lower parts inside the tank and I just hope those areas are fully covered...
Finally a look inside the tank
UPDATE: Forgot to include a picture from the bottom after having it coated with some anti rust paint. It will get another transparant layer of tectyl, I know it smells and will get sticky but don't want to give rust another chance