More progress! Started last night with testing the valves. We poured some gasoline in the intake ports, kicked some plastic tubs out of the way, tilted the head up at and angle so the mating surfaces were horizontal, set a timer for five minutes, and walked away.
A couple of minutes later, they were still totally dry. We started prepping the tank for stripping.
Then my brother heard the timer go off, but I was elbow-deep in Aircraft stripper.
Then he wandered over to look at them about the 7 minute mark, and there was fuel
everywhere. I mean, it had completely soaked one of the shop towels. The #1 port must have put out something like three ounces of gas. Way more than we poured in there, so it must have been #1 & #2, but of course the towel was soaked, so we couldn't tell.
Then we figured out that the plastic tubs we'd thoughtfully flipped over and leaned against the back of the band saw had had some water in them, and that was what was soaking the towels. The head was fine. At the 8 minute mark, there was a tiny bit of liquid on the valves, but not even enough to mark the towels. Flipped the valves over, and the other side (exhaust) was the same- a tiny bit of liquid at the 5 minute mark, and no worse at the 20 minute mark. We pronounced them good to go.
At the same time, I was figuring out how to strip paint off. Although the outer layer was rattle-canned that I know from personal experience comes right off with fuel (there's a reason we're stripping this thing), I think I want a completely bare tank. I'm going to lay a stripe of black down the top, offset to the left to compensate for the fuel filler hole on the right, and then pastewax the bejeesus out of it.
So I smeared stripper all over it, which started to dry right away, but also softened it up. Hit it with a wire brush, and it worked it all into this horrific slurry. Still, you can already see the original primer (I think), then red, blue and finally that blackrattlecan.
This wasn't working, it was just making a horrible mess of things. Everything smeared together into this beastly, reeking paste. So we poured on a whole mess of the stripper, covered it with plastic wrap, and let it sit until we could see the paint blistering off, and then scraped it with a bit of wood.
That worked much better, and you can see the metal coming out.
We did that one more time, then wiped the tank down with paper towels and dumped the whole thing in a plastic tub for a cold water scrub. At this point, it was down to stubborn bits and tight corners. I pulled it out, and hit it with a razor blade scraper.
So: Aircraft stripper on and then wipe didn't work- it dried out way too fast, and we couldn't put enough on because it just runs down. So goo it up good, plastic wrap that sucker and give it a few minutes. Then scrape the blisters off with wood.
At that point I got an impatient text from my better half asking where I was, so we put it away, cleaned up, and hit the pub for burgers and beer. Good times.
And there it sits, lurking in the shadows, until this weekend when I'll hit it with a wire cup on an angle grinder and get it totally cleaned up. Then rustoleum automotive primer and paint in a can on the underside, and sand up the top side. Black racing strip, some paste wax, and baddabing baddaboom, we're good to go for the rest of the season!
Automotive rustoleum is great stuff. It doesn't go on perfectly even, so I can't really recommend it for large surfaces unless you're going to do a lot of sanding, but for small bits and for anything you won't see, it's amazing. Does well with UV and it scoffs at gas. Same stuff I used to paint my pickup truck a couple of years ago, and while it got a few chips (it's a pickup truck and got used hard), it actually did better than the spray-on rattlecan bedliner in the back.
