This past weekend I picked up some Transchem Muriatic Acid from the local Farm & Fleet. Frankie gave me the pro tip that I could clean out my triumph gas tank with a quick bath of muriatic acid. Remember the saying, 'Do as you ought to add acid to water!' My dilution was 1:1 (1 part water and 1 part acid). I left it sit in the tank for roughly 3 hours and what I saw when I came back horrified me.
There was a thick film of rusty looking liquid right at the top of the gas tank. It's no surprise that the tank screen and inline fuel filter was clogged. Heck there was NO fuel in the carburetor bowl when I took things apart.
After about 3 hours I came back to the tank and dumped the acid into a 5 gallon home dept bucket.
Ewww...
It is crazy for me to believe that all that rust came out of the tank. It even came out in 3" x 1/2" rust chips that can be found floating on the top.
I flushed the tank out with water to dilute any traces of acid. The tricky thing about Muriatic acid is that it actually etched the steel leaving it open to rust very quickly. I knew that this would happen, and already had some Red-Kote on hand to seal the tank from getting this bad again. Before applying Red-Kote be sure to slosh around some acetone in the tank to remove any traces of moisture or contaminants before applying the sealer. Any traces of crud left in the tank can prevent the product from making a good seal and can chip off and clog your inline filter.
Currently the tank is sitting at my parents house drying, I look forward to getting back to it this weekend. Hopefully this weekend I will get to hear the cub "purrrrr."
Stay tuned!
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