Cleaning the Fuel Tank

Yesterday I found a bit more time to work on the car. I wasn't so miserably cold out so I made my way back into the garage and finished wiping out the tank as best I could with just a rag and water. The goal here was to get as much out of the tank as I could before I switched to cleaning it out with the acetone. Due to the fact that I decided to just go with the new baffle setup from John Hervey I just yanked the old baffle out. Take a look at this thing! If you think this looks bad, there was literally a 1/8 inch of sludge along the entire bottom of the tank. I even found a few leaves in the tank! When the previous mechanic replaced the feul pump the last time he clearly was not very careful about what fell into the tank.


Once I had done the best job I could do with the rag and water I dumped about a half gallon of acetone into the tank and then walked away for a couple of hours and let the acetone do its work. After a couple hours I came back and used the rag to wipe the inside of the tank with the acetone still in the tank. By this time I was able to remove pretty much everything that was stuck to the inside of the tank with relative ease. However getting your arm into the tank and getting the area toward the back is definitely a trick. I then let the car sit with the acetone in the tank for a couple more hours before removing the acetone, and finishing the wipe out the the tank. Once the acetone was out I proceeded to wipe out the tank with a rag and water again just to make sure I got everything.


As a side note, when working with acetone be very carful not to get it on anything else unless you want it damaged. You will notice that I put a rag around the tank to soak up any splashes, just in case my pour wasn't quite accurate (it wasn't). Also be sure to wear latex gloves at all times, protective eye wear, and only use it in a well ventilated area. I did this in my garage with the large door open so there was plenty of fresh air, but be sure to do your best not to inhale the fumes. There is nothing about acetone that is good for a human.

This was the final result, not bad, but not perfect (I also still need to do a bit more clean-up around the mouth the tank). It is a huge improvement from where I started. There is just a little bit of rust residue in some areas -- mainly in the area toward the back of the tank that is really hard to reach, and being a bit of a perfectionist I want to get that out. If your wondering how I could see into the back of the tank, I actually stuck a small digital camera in the tank to take pictures of areas I could not see . My plan to to re-do this whole process once I get the tank pulled out of the car so that I can clean up all of the debris that is up in this area around the tank.