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Been slowly trying to clean stuff out of my ’35’s gas tank. It is in decent shape but had bits of rust, sand, and a black shiny lacquer on the bottom. My friend Jay at the National Auto Museum (Reno) had some great results recently using vinegar to clean out a ’27 Lincoln tank, so I gave it a try. He has been having lots of problems the last few years with old black stuff in the fuel tanks getting past the fuel strainers and gumming up the valves.
After a couple rounds of vinegar in my ’35 tank, it seemed it barely touched the black junk, and after drying the tank with a hair dryer I let it sit for a week, and a gooey black tar slowly oozed out of the drain hole. It resembles asphalt on a warm day. Anyway, I did an experiment and dropped bits of the blob into vinegar, kerosene, and lacquer thinner. It immediately dissolved in lacquer thinner, seemed impervious to the other two. At any rate I am speculating that the black goo may be the residual from old gasoline, perhaps WWII era. Since gasoline is a mixture of light and heavy distillates, I am thinking since the stuff resembles asphalt perhaps they tried to stretch the civilian gasoline by having significant amounts of really heavy distillates in the gas that tended to stay behind in the tank as the light distillates evaporated out in cars with limited use. Since it is somewhat soluble in the original gas, it manages to go back into solution in fresh gas and get past the fuel filters. Comments?
Helpful hint: don’t leave the sending unit hole open when sitting outside, had to fish a dead mouse out of it yesterday (duh).
I seem to remember some time ago (Years)therewas a similar subject. A member posted photos of a special rig he had built out of everyday items that held the tank in such a way between two discs set at an angle so that the tank rotated like on a swish plate. The rig was driven by a small electric motor & a vee belt. He put a couple of gallons of solvent in the tank & ran the rig overnite and changed the solvent a few times until the inside of the tank was clean. Sorry I cannot find the article, but with a bit of inventiveness you could do the same.
Cheers Jak.
All petroleum products contain some small quantities of ‘other’ petroleum molecules..
Motor oil contains paraffin which is why regular motor thickens as it’s temperature drops.
I’m sure it also contains asphalt, and many other molecular chains that either bond when cooled, or separated when heated.
Only TRUE synthetic products have a near-pure content of the desired product. This is what Aviation gasoline is, it’s a virtual synthetic fuel. This results in a fuel that is stable for years, with out added stabilizers. Aviation gasoline also has stable vapor pressure, so it doesn’t boil at high altitude.
TRUE synthetic motor oil is similar, it has very stable and consistent molecules. They stay the same length, and therefore the same viscosity within it’s normal operating temperatures.
Most ‘Synthetic’ oils on the shelf today are called group III oils.. they are ‘dinosaur’ oils, with very sophisticated additive packages to make the oil behave ‘like’ a true group IV synthetic oil, which is man made, not distilled from normal oil stocks.
For the above, I’m digging up info from my memory from more than a decade ago. I’m sure it’s not 100% accurate, but the basics are correct or close to correct. The fine details may be slightly different.
So, in regards to the black goo found in your gas tank. I’m sure it’s as you describe, evaporated gasoline, leaving behind the long-chain molecules, like tars, asphalt, paraffin,etc. I’d try dissolving it in gasoline.. Kerosene, MEK, xylol, lacquer thinner, and maybe acetone.
In cleaning some fuel tanks, I usually find that MEK, Lacquer Thinner, and xylol [sp?] will dissolve most of the residue. But sometimes the residue has to be rubbed with a brush or scraper to remove it from the tank inner surface. I have a parts-leaning brush with a made-up extra long handle for cleaning the inside surfaces.
What is unclear, is what the effects of 10% ethanol has on the deposits and residue in tanks, lines and carburetor bowls.
When I was turning wrenches part time in the early ’80’s, we were having some serious problems with ethanol ‘tainted’ fuel. Rubber fuel lines swelled, burst and caused engine fires. Carburetor jets grew a ‘fuzz’ like a layer of mold on the brass jets.. we never found a solvent to remove this fuzz. We had to use ‘pipe-cleaners, and fine wires to clean the very small idle passageways.
I understand that mechanics experimenting have figured out that an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner with water and dishsoap will remove the ethanol-fuzz off the carb jets .
Let us know what solvent works best. I set up a line of shot glasses, each with a different solvent and dropped a pea-sized ball of the ‘goo’ into each glass.. and let them sit over several days..
I’m curious what your results will be.
Greg L
Greg, that’s what I did, put the blobs in shot glasses, lacquer thinner the obvious winner. Based on that I’ve already done a round of cleaning the tank with lacquer thinner, it seemed to do the trick as far as the blob goes (grounded it with a pipe and copper wire – paranoid about sparks and explosions!). The black tar had plugged the tiny holes of the King-Sealy sending unit riser tubes, the vinegar actually worked fairly well on that combined with blowing them out with compressed air and more lacquer thinner.
Now I am done to rust and sand particles, vacuumed most of them out. As I mentioned a few months ago, I’d never get rid of all of them and worry about blocking those tiny ~.030 riser holes, so today I designed an over-elaborate brass screen strainer to envelope the whole KS sender/pickup tube assembly. It will be a few weeks before I can get to it.
If you still have a rusty inside surface, I’ll recommend taking the tank to a radiator shop, have them unsolder the end caps of the tank, open it up, and sand blast it, and coat it with one of the new, ethanol-proof tank sealants.
You will have to cut some holes in the inner baffles, to provide access for the sandblaster and the hand and brush used to apply the sealant.
Greg L
For simple tanks without a lot of baffles I’ve had good results knocking the rust loose by tumbling and/or shaking them with either pebbles or a couple of feet of heavy link chain, then flush thoroughly, and follow that with Bill Hirsch tank liner. This worked well for cleaning out my 1922 Series 33. For more complex or cruddy tanks, I’ve used Tank Renu twice with good results. Here’s their link: http://gastankrenu.com/
Don’t want to be disagreeable, but I think I have what’s left in the tank down to a manageable level if I protect the sending unit/intake pipe with a strainer. The black goo is out thanks to the lacquer thinner and what is left are particulates that a strainer screen will keep out. No matter what I do it will never be completely free of bits that could clog the King-Seeley burp tubes, so I am building the strainer regardless. Deconstructing a sound tank, cutting holes in the baffles and re-soldering seems to me like a lot of cost and work with the likely reward of creating worse problems than it solves. I had fuel tank sealer originally in my ’36 Packard decades ago and had to drop it and clean it out when the sealer failed. The “solution”” became the problem. I have been operating it sealant free for about fifteen years now.”
The original tank sealer from decades ago began to disolve and break loose once ethanol was introduced and became common. I went through that with a ’24 Buick that had been restored back in the 1990’s. The sealer has since been re-formulated, eliminating that problem. The new sealer worked well once I got the old crud out. But I would certainly agree that the least invasive and most simple solution is certainly preferable.
Hi James, you certainly are not being disagreeable.. we’re here to discuss different possible solutions to an existing problem.
If you feel that the tank is clean, does not have flakey rust on the top of the tank, then by all means, try creating a mesh/screen sock to go over the fuel pickup spaghetti stick-tubes.
Since I get a headache everytime I look at those goofy fuel pickup systems. I really don’t understand why they need so many different tubes, vents, cans etc.
The basic premise is that as the fuel level rises, the pressure on the small capillary tube leading up front to the gauge increases, and the level of fluid rises in the gauge..
Since there is no circulation of fluid, I’m not sure that the tubes will plug up unless they get clogged with another layer of the black ‘goo’ if your tank’s fuel evaporates away. And i’d think that the ‘goo’ would coat and seal a mesh sock as easy as the end of a tube. ??
Did your fuel pickup tube have a mesh sock on it? I’d be much more concerned about the fuel pickup reliability than the fuel gauge..
I will have to call/email several folks with functioning King-sealy gauge systems, and see if they ever have had a plugged fuel gauge line..
Take care,
Greg Long
Greg, one of the things I think about as I lay awake at night these days is how that goofy thing works, and whether putting a screen around it will keep it from working. I think I have it figured out and it is definitely non-intuitive. One of the PASB’s had a decent cutaway and description. It is a monometer, but a bit like a diving bell it relies on the air trapped in the little canister at the bottom to provide the air pressure to move the column of fluid in gauge. If as things slosh around the canister loses its air charge (trying to imagine again how that happens) it won’t read properly. The little tubes recharge the air supply. Basically as the fuel is burned the average fuel level drops below the level of the little tray on the sending unit and the fuel in the little tube coming up through the tray drops below the tray as well. When the car moves and the fuel sloshes around it refills the tray with fuel and traps a little air bubble in the tube. as it does that it keeps slowly transporting little air bubbles down the tube and they emerge at the bottom where the air is trapped in the upside down cup shape below the canister. The bottom of the canister has a little tiny hole that lets the air trapped underneath bubble into the canister and replace the air trapped in the canister. So basically if I understand it, when the fuel level is in the vicinity of the trays it is continuously pushing air bubbles and fuel down the tubes as the fuel surges up and down with the motion of the car. I don’t think it is from splashing into the trays as much as surging like a tide into the trays, so I have convinced myself that a screen surrounding it shouldn’t keep it from working.
The odds are that none of the pieces left in the tank would ever plug the tubes, but hard to say. The bottoms of the tubes and the vent hole in the bottom of the canister were plugged by goo, so my first concern was getting the goo out as it can get past a strainer. A couple years ago one of my ’66 Chrysler’s strainers was pretty restricted from 40 years of service and I back flushed it to clear it. The tank itself was amazingly clean without particulates. In the first instance I am concerned about keeping the fuel pickup tube clear to not starve the engine, but while I’m at it may as well put a fine enough mesh to protect the KS “burp”” tubes. It doesn’t appear there was any kind of screen or strainer on my ’35 originally.
Jim”
I spent the best part of one week last summer fixing one of these things. Soup to nuts repaired the entire system. Then put 10 gallons in the tank and it worked fine. Drove it around for a few days and all was well. The next morning it read zero on a full tank. The same reading of zero for two weeks, then one day it was working fine. It has continued to read or not as the thing feels like it. I wont service it again as I know it’s right. Junk when it was new. My 31 series 42 gas guage is electric and works fine, I wonder why they changed?
You need to take the Tony Zappone approach to K-S gas gauges.
Take one of those red straws that you put in your WD40 to focus the spray, measure off the correct length, cut it and then put it in the K-S head unit on the dash.
Then your gas gauge will always read the same, empty or full.
You just have to fill up the tank before each outing.
BTW, Chis Diekman seems to have his K-S working, so perhaps, you need to ask him how he did it. I think that he used silicone sealant on each of the joints.
I have a K-S on my Series 80 and it has always been a bother.
There is something to be said about the Tony Zappone approach! However, I took the K-S gauge as a challenge and did have it working. The key is using good clean copper tubing between the gauge and the tank, properly routed, with no kinks. The sender obviously has to be in working condition, and above all, you must have air-tight connections at all interfaces. I used narrow strips of teflon tape on the threads to guarantee a seal. If you cut the strips narrow enough, the excess does not hang out like a typical plumbing repair. The high density fluid, however is corrosive to the gauge face, and the red dye in the fluid tends to fade out. Getting a K-S gauge to operate properly is a challenge, but keeping it running is also a challenge. If you want to pursue this, there are a couple of good articles in the PASB’s that I used, and I wrote one kind of compiling the ideas. If you want to write to me, I can also help you with getting the gauge to work. But….the WD40 applicator tubes don’t fade out, and then the trip mileage odometer becomes your gas gauge!
Happy Motoring,
Chris
After all this discussion on K-S gas gauges I feel lucky to have a Motometer/Negal electric one on my 1929.It now works thanks to Dave Murray sending me a serviceable tank sender unit. Hope you all warm up soon
Is that a delivery cycle? Front fender says Hollywood something. Did the dealership deliver the car and the driver took the cycle back to the dealership?