Topic: Zinc or cadmium plated tank?

[Slayer]

I need to clean out the inside of my gas tank and eventually paint the outside flat black. I was combing the forums when I kept scanning over "electrolysis" and "zinc lined" and "muriatic acid" with a few other words I only hear at work. I work at a zinc and cadmium plating shop as a purchaser and maintenance manager. I realized how easy and bad ass it would be to throw a gas tank in the production line next time we plate black. We do brake rotors for big auto manufacturers. It should prevent rust inside and out and never have to worry about it flaking off. Before I get too many friends over this post I have not brought it up to the production managers too see if it is cool or not but it seems like a good idea to a knuckle dragger like me. How sweet would it be to have a tank professionally cleaned and finished inside and out in minutes! Feel free to burst my bubble with science, it does seem to good to be true.

[Old Scrambler]

You may be getting a lot of friends............I think this would be a cool thing to try......but I would do it in yellow, white or silver so you could see when the tank is nearly full at the gas-station. You will probably need to retap the threads for the petcock.

[Slayer]

A production supervisor said I would have to paint over it. If the black zinc gets scratched it exposes silver. He also told me that there would probably be little rainbow streaks and that is not what I am going for. I am still going to put the tank through the electrocleaners to get rid of all rust and find something to coat the inside. I think I am going to try to pound in knee dents too.

[mystic_1]

Have you followed up on the cadmium plating?  Does it look like this?



Could be cool.  An old Swiss bike called the Neander used to come cadmium plated from the factory.

http://www.motorbase.com/auctionlot/by-id/1229777866/

mystic_1

[Ecosse]

very interesting. that swiss bike is likewise very cool.

[nokrome]

i think it would still be a good idea even if you had to paint the outside because the whole tank would be corrosion resistant inside and out,
  cad plating would be awesome on the inside of a tank, i work with a lot of cad plated hardware and have seen cad plated nuts, bolts, screws etc. that have been out in the weather for years with no sign of corrosion

[Slayer]

That Neander is a nice one. I never even thought about plating it other than black. I would be able to only plate on the outside of parts, so the inside of the gas tank would still need a good cleaning. We have muriatic acid so I could use that. We zinc plate the exact type of rotor in the picture. For cadmium it is usually more of small parts like fittings and hinges but the cadmium tanks are about 2'x4'.