One thing down
Posted in The Long Rode on August 23rd, 2010 by WadeBack in Texas I thought the right gas tank was going to be the problem child of the fuel system. Well I was wrong. Turns out under the little bit of fuel that was still left in the left tank was a lot of rust. Additionally there was rust on the roof of the left tank. I was relay anxious to try out the electrolysis method of rust removal on the tanks and so that is what I did.
Following the description from this web page as well as others I got my rig together. To this end I got a 500w computer power supply, and following the direction in the following video and turned it into a normal power supply.
Now that I have a working DC power supply and an old steal file, that I padded with sponges, I was ready to go. Oh I also made my own sodium carbonate (washing soda) by baking sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) at 300of for an hour as per a website I can’t find any more. But there are plenty of other sites that give the same basic recipe. Now with all the parts assembled I was ready to go.
Photos of my setup can be found here.
Drum role…. and I flicked the switch and saw nothing just like I was hoping. No sparks no smoke. After about 15-30 mins. if I listened closely I was able to hear some bubbling under the neck sponge of the iron prob. This was a good sign. Since the tank was so big and the prob (file) was so small in comparison I thought I would let it run for 24hrs. After the first day I reset and went again for another 24hrs. Today I finally said I’m done with this and was ready to give up. I took it all apart, washed every thing out thoroughly and prepared to go get some muriatic acid to do the job. However, after I cleaned and dried the tank I was very happy with the results. So instead of switching methods I setup the system for the right tank. I think 24hrs should suffice for this tank but we’ll see.