It Just Keeps Getting Better!!!!!!

[GitSum]

Reminds me of this thread I wrote about 3 years ago! (and my tank did not even come close to looking like that)

Have you ever looked inside of your gas tank?

 

[T_C]

Does anyone know if fuel additives cause problems?

That's a pretty big open ended question. Lot's of additives, lots of reasons they get put in there.

Then there is the question of what constitutes a problem and what material(s) the fuel system is made of.

Take for instance many of the gaskets or diaphragms used in older systems. Ethanol (an additive) plays havoc with them. Swells them, dissolves them or possibly corrodes 'em. But is that a problem with ethanol or were we just using sub par materials all along? Ethanol does have it's good points, being an alcohol it attracts and binds with water. How do you get water out of your gas tank after it arrives (via bad gas, humidity or condensation), well, dump in some alcohol like Heet or Sea-Foam or wait for the ethanol in most mixed gases to pick it up.

Now I am not an ethanol fan, so put away the pitch-forks... please!

 

[MrB]

If it's not rust then all it needs is a cleaning, but odds are it is rust and scale.
There may have been something specific about the environment the bike had been stored in that promoted condensation.
It's the little things that happen every day that add up, cool nights with lots of morning dew can work wonders on machinery. Drops condensing around the gas cap dripping in a tank every day during the off-season can add up.
Keeping the tank full when not riding is good protection.
Nice thing is that you're in the thick of it and will know exactly what your fuel tank has in it going forward. Thanks for the pics and info.

 

[Scooter]

Shazzam! Well I guess you must be glad that you didn't listen to me and simply ordered a replacement fuel pump off of eBay. Be interesting to see the inside of that filter.

Even though it looks like rust from your pictures I don't think that it is. You would have needed that tank to be empty for quite some time as well as a lot of moisture present. If you went and operated the bike until it ran out of fuel there would still be some left on the bottom of the tank. The rust would form everywhere except the areas still covered by the fuel, i.e. bottom of the tank.

 

[nhdiesel]

That is rust, and I'd bet a paycheck your bike has seen a fair amount of ethanol. I've seen at least a hundred tanks and pumps that look like that. Blow is a photo (poor...sorry) of the inside of a tank that had E10 in it for a year. One year ago that tank was still shiny when I serviced the generator. Now I have a boat anchor.

Even though it looks like rust from your pictures I don't think that it is. You would have needed that tank to be empty for quite some time as well as a lot of moisture present. If you went and operated the bike until it ran out of fuel there would still be some left on the bottom of the tank. The rust would form everywhere except the areas still covered by the fuel, i.e. bottom of the tank.

Fuel is oxygenated. Add the moisture that ethanol attracts, and a full tank of fuel will rust faster than an empty one. The photo below is of a tank that was full for 1 year with e10. Its actually a 15 year old generator, but never saw ethanol until last year, and was still in great shape until then. 14 years without ethanol, and it stayed shiny new; 1 year with, and this is the result. You decide. I live in a very humid area, so plenty of moisture to be drawn in. I make a decent living replacing fuel tanks, lines, and pumps that have rusted on the inside.

 

[Coucours Grad]

Get some scrub brushes and try to clean it.


If it was mud dumped in the tank you'll get it out with elbow grease and some time invested.



If its rust you'll know cause it wont cleanup and then it becomes ebat time.



But I gotta say...WOW, aint never seen anything like that before!

 

[Mick]

Shazzam! Well I guess you must be glad that you didn't listen to me and simply ordered a replacement fuel pump off of eBay. Be interesting to see the inside of that filter.

Heh! Yeah a new pump by itself would not be of much use in this case. I did however get an entire new fuel pump assembly from Ron Ayers. Got it sitting on my work bench unopened. Looks like it will be a few more weeks before it sees any use.

Even though it looks like rust from your pictures I don't think that it is. You would have needed that tank to be empty for quite some time as well as a lot of moisture present.

The bike is an '05 that I bought it in August and it only had 7800 miles on it. So yeah, it had to have sat for quite a while at some point in its life.

The ironic thing is that I'm usually the one who raises warning flags about older bikes with extremely low mileage. I've raised the point on this site and others. Usually what I'm thinking about though are seals drying up etc. This sort of situation never occurred to me.

At any rate, I violated my own M.O. big time by buying this thing in a rush. I usually research and look, and look some more before letting loose of my money. Based on past purchases, I ordinarily look for a bike with under 10k miles but is only 2 or 3 years old max so that I can be assured it has been ridden and maintained.

The last 3 years sort of laid the groundwork for me jumping on this older, low mileage bike. Except for very short periods, I've been unable to ride because of multiple surgeries. During periods of convalescing between operations, I'd go through my MC travel pictures and look at my videos and practically whimper like a puppy wanting so bad to be doing transcontinental travel again. I wasn't sure I should even consider doing that kind of riding again. So, when a "cheap" low mileage ST popped up, I jumped on it without my normal M.O. taking over.

If you went and operated the bike until it ran out of fuel there would still be some left on the bottom of the tank. The rust would form everywhere except the areas still covered by the fuel, i.e. bottom of the tank.

We'll see. At this point, I suspect it may be combination of both dirt and rust. The way that gasoline wet stuff came off the pump, turned to mush in my fingers and broke apart into silt sized particles makes me almost certain that it's dirt (mud if you will). In my experience, rust particles are much bigger and certainly aren't going to disassociate into very fine particles from just pinching it between the fingers.

 

[Throttlejockey]

Why not just try cleaning the tank to see if it is rusted?

 

[Mellow]

We'll see. At this point, I suspect it may be combination of both dirt and rust. The way that gasoline wet stuff came off the pump, turned to mush in my fingers and broke apart into silt sized particles makes me almost certain that it's dirt (mud if you will). In my experience, rust particles are much bigger and certainly aren't going to disassociate into very fine particles from just pinching it between the fingers.

Could be it was larger particles early on when it first started to rust... then it sat for a few years and adding gas to it recently due to your purchase and riding may have caused it to appear as it does...

Sorry about your luck Mick, hopefully it will stop there.

 

[J. Fitzgerald]

Your pics & description of the substance you've encountered appears to be an exact match for what I found in the tank of a used Jeep Cherokee (one of our fleet vehicles) that I bought a few years back. The vehicle had been out of service for a little over a year when I bought it. I had to put a new fuel pump on it due to the "gunk" that was present. I know for certain that e10 was used in it 99% of the time. I also had to replace the fuel sending unit.....when I touched it, it also turned to dust. Having said that, after replacing the tank, pump, sending unit & filter, the Jeep hasn't given a minutes trouble since. Good luck.

John

 

[Mick]

OK, got the upper tank off with some effort. Could NOT get the dang drain hose off from the tank so just disconnected it elsewhere.

I think I may have dodged a bullet. When I inspected the inside of the tank I saw absolutely no indication of rust or dirt. The only rust I saw was at the tank's absolute lowest point on the outside of the lip next the the fuel sending unit. By the way, the brown flake near the bolt at about the five o'clock position is debris, not rust.

Here's the only rust I saw:

And here is what the inside of the tank looked like. Not exactly in focus but you can see that there is no rust. It looked like this all the way around:

In addition to looking with a mirror, I felt all around the inside opening and detected no indication of rust or sand or debris or anything.

So, should I just sand off the little bit of surface rust or leave it alone? Should the spot be treated with anything to stabilize it?

Anything else I should do?

 

[Mick]

Your pics & description of the substance you've encountered appears to be an exact match for what I found in the tank of a used Jeep Cherokee (one of our fleet vehicles) that I bought a few years back. The vehicle had been out of service for a little over a year when I bought it. I had to put a new fuel pump on it due to the "gunk" that was present. I know for certain that e10 was used in it 99% of the time.

Since I found no evidence of dirt in the upper tank, I've got to concede to those whose opinions were on the side of rust in the lower tank. The thing that still weirds me out is the nature of the "rust"... the way it just crumbles into very fine, silt sized particles. Just like mud. It's almost as if the stuff is a precipitate. Can e10 cause this???

I also had to replace the fuel sending unit.....when I touched it, it also turned to dust. Having said that, after replacing the tank, pump, sending unit & filter, the Jeep hasn't given a minutes trouble since.

Thanks for mentioning this. It's reassuring. Maybe one of these days I'll actually have a running, reliable, LD touring bike.

 

[sennister]

snip

So, should I just sand off the little bit of surface rust or leave it alone? Should the spot be treated with anything to stabilize it?

Anything else I should do?

I would clean it up. Sand paper would work. Then use rust converter on it. If you can't find it in an auto shop the above is a link to it in Amazon. It will convert the rust to a hard material that can be painted if you want.

I would write off the lower tank and jump on the one offered.

I also changed my pump at around 96,xxx miles on my 03. The lower tank was spotless. Nothing like this. There is a thread on my project out here.

Edit:

As far as cause. Who knows. At this point it doesn't really matter. You have a new pump assembly, access to a good lower tank, change them out and call it good. There are plenty of high mileage STs out there that never see this so it could be combination of a lot of things. E10 that had moisture, maybe they added something to the fuel. You know the bike sat so problems can happen. You said the bike ran great until these issues start happening which were likely the pump and filter getting plugged up. Change all this stuff out with what you have and ride.

 

[yelsob]

Kreem is a product I've read a few article on.

Kreem

Kreem video

 

[MrB]

Since your rust was so extreme and limited to specific parts I wonder if this is an electrical issue that produced a form of electrolysis? I've seen electrolysis used for both rust removal and creation.
Any chemists here?

 

[BakerBoy]

MrB, interesting thought. It is my understanding that would require chlorides to be present (treated water or sea water), and continuous amperage & a specific voltage for months (voltage unknown to me). One part (the pump assembly) would be the anode and the tank would be a cathode (or vice versa), therefore only one of the two parts would then have the iron coating it. I'm thinking that environment isn't present. But if it were somehow present, the technique only attacks exposed, free iron (it doesn't diffuse iron out of an alloy's microstructure at room temperature).

 

[nhdiesel]

You guys are making it sound like this is an uncommon thing. Add ethanol, let it sit for several months, and this is the result. The severity will depend on where you live, the specific additive package used in your area, weather conditions (humidity as well as temperature), and how long the vehicle sits. But for vehicles not used a lot, what Mick posted is very, very common. In my area we get temperature extremes, lots of humidity, and lots of vehicles parked for months at a time (plow trucks, summer vehicles, winter vehicles, etc.) Replacing motorcycle, plow truck, lawn mower, "specialty vehicle" (classic car), etc. fuel tanks, pumps, senders, and steel lines is very common in my area. Most ST owners aren't going to see this a lot because generally, we ride our bikes a lot. The most they sit is 3 or 4 months through the winter. But park one of our bikes for a year or so with a full tank of ethanol in a humid environment, and this will happen. Take a ride up here- my KLR, Intruder, lawn mower, and generator all look much like his tank. Its a fact of life here, we know we have to replace tanks every few years. More often for vehicles that sit for any time, but yes, it happens at a slower rate on the frequently used ones.

 

[Snave]

This has been an amazing thread. Let us know how it works out, Mick.
And I am never going anywhere near ethanol now, with either car, SUV, generator, snow blower - or ST.

 

[Mick]

You guys are making it sound like this is an uncommon thing. Add ethanol, let it sit for several months, and this is the result.

So what do you do if you can't avoid it? I just looked at this website:

http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp?stateprov=TX

.. and there is not one ethanol free station listed in Houston or the surrounding area.

When I know my bike is going to be sitting up for several months, I use STABIL. Is it effective against the effects of ethanol?

 

[T_C]

I use Stabil for all my small engine gas. Soon as I fill the 5 gallon tank at the station I dump the stabil in and never had any issues. But that was only in the last few years. They been seeling 10% around here for many more then that.

But for many years, I never used the stabil and can say I have never seen gas issues. Snow blower sits for months (sometimes years) without being used. Now that I run dry before I put it away, but it's never 100% empty, kind of have to disassemble it for that. Chainsaws sit for months or more, even leaving two cycle in them, lawnmower I never empty nor generators, and for the first few years I never used stabil.

If I was parking the olde motorcycle for the winter I would put some stabil in the tank, but as mentioned before, for many years I never did that. Heck when I bought it off the old gal it had sat for several years with ethanol gas in the tank and it still fired and ran. The ST I never sit long enough to worry about.. till now.

Not sure what additives cause problems at what environment extremes, but around here at least ethanol has not made my toilets run backwards.