Well, I removed the gas tank, and this is what it looks like.





There's an assload of rust, and metal is coming off in big flakes. I'm worried about the safety of it. Is it ok?

 

Holes?

 

Mine looked like that. I applied fiberglass on the suspect areas. Seems to work.

 

i'd sandblast it to see how bad it is, then i guess you could fiberglass over it and then spray rubber over it

 

Murph, hate to tell you this, but fiberglass will often leak. Had that problem in the way way back days with Harley fuel tanks.

$100T2, how does the inside of the tank look? If the inside is rust free and sound and there are no holes or thin spots on the outside, prep, treat, paint and seal it.

 

I don't see any holes, but I think I need to remove the three pick-ups and the fuel gauge sender to check the inside.

 

Yep, you do. replace the old screws with allen head ones while they are out.

How's the bottom of the tank look. I've seen tanks that looked a lot worse on the ouside, that were in great shape inside, and vise versa.

 

The bottom is fine... It's the top that looks like absolute ****. I didn't get a chance to open it up, been busy sanding and stripping the bottom of the car. I got that "rubberized undercoating" stuff that I'm going to do on the bottom of the car, so that was today's (and probably the next 4 days or so) project.

 

That rubberized undercoating is some NASTY stuff! Make sure you wear gloves, old clothes and a respirator!!! I painted an entire closet with it (water proofing for in wall aquarium) and I got it on my arms in places. I scrubbed and scrubbed and it finally came off after a week or so.

 

Are you pre-treating before the rubber under coat? if you aren't you're wasting time and materials.

 

Yeah, I would really suggest checking inside as well. My outside of tank looked alot better than yours and the inside was shot. That will save a lot of pissed off hours on the side of the road. Unless you just happen to ALWAYS be carrying spare filters.

 

What do you mean? I'm taking it down to bare metal, then following the directions.

 

If the metal is not protected/sealed/primed/painted prior to the rubberized coating, the metal can and will rust out as quick or quicker. Even if you do a perfect coating with the rubberized, it can trap moisture, then the metal rusts out underneath the coating and is gone before you even see it.

All of the metal on the car that has sound deading, rock chip protection, whatever, has been treated by paint or galvanizing prior to the coating.

The rubberized coating does not protect the metal, it protects the coating that protects the metal.

 

Oh, that's fine, because I'm painting everything first.

 

Well I have been lucky so far, but you are right trochoid, fiberglass and fuel do not mix well. One thing that makes my repair work is that the top of the tank was glassed, and it had pin holes. On the top the fiberglass exposure to gas or ethanol is minimal, as opposed to a repair on the bottom or side that would be exposed to liquid fuel, and hence the time to failure is much much longer.