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?
Have you ever looked inside of your gas tank?
Does anyone know if fuel additives cause problems?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.