I suspect some time this summer I'm going to have to bite the bullet and clean my gas tank. It's 32 years old, aluminum, and I suspect has never been cleaned. I have occassional fuel related shutdowns, which I can overcome temporarily with the priming bulb, and less temporarily by changing both my water-separator filter and my inline filter, the standard Racor and Moyer filters. I don't know for sure that the tank needs cleaning, but the only opening big enough to use to inspect it visually is the fuel guage cutout, which I could only see into by removing the tank anyway. Also, my compulsiveness will lead me to lay awake nights imagining that the tank has 2" of varnish and crud in the bottom until I can prove otherwise. I think I can get the tank out without removing anything hard to fix, but I won't really know until I try it.
Now for the hard part. Gasoline vapors scare the !@#$ out of me. My plans are to run the tank pretty well empty, drain the rest, remove the tank. Any suggestions for safely cleaning the tank if I get it out? Should I rinse it with water first, non-pressurized, to eliminate the risk of explosion, then pressure wash it? Acetone? I've read that old car buffs take them to radiator shops for a boil-out.
Now for the hard part. Gasoline vapors scare the !@#$ out of me. My plans are to run the tank pretty well empty, drain the rest, remove the tank. Any suggestions for safely cleaning the tank if I get it out? Should I rinse it with water first, non-pressurized, to eliminate the risk of explosion, then pressure wash it? Acetone? I've read that old car buffs take them to radiator shops for a boil-out.
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