It seems that the promise of a free SLUK tee-shirt for scooterists top tips is too good an offer to be overlooked. The tips have come rolling in and of course, we’re more than happy to oblige the selected few. This time around, Steve Rushton tells us of his very cost effective way of dealing with rust in a fuel tank.
We’ve already seen some impressive bodges and repairs carried out at the roadside during the Euro Lambretta so feel free to send them in if and when you get home from Italy.
Age old problem
You have a nice Lambretta, or indeed a Vespa, it’s ages old and it’s running rougher than a badger’s back side. It won’t tick over and stalls frequently, usually at the most inopportune times.
Knowledge
You may have restored it, or it may be resplendent in its barn find patina. Knowing a little bit about the scooter, or getting the help of a mate who does, you check the carburettor, taking it apart carefully and find that the float bowl has more rust swilling around the bottom of it than it should.
Further Examination
You continue with the carb strip, removing the fuel banjo and behind it, what should be a clean plastic gauze filter is more rust caked than the proverbial sheriff’s badge. Removing the fuel tap you discover that the filter feeding through it is in a similar order.
What to do?
The truly clinical answer is to remove the tank and either replace it, or clean it. Looking at the first option? Dent and rust free tanks for a 50+ year old Lambretta, or indeed a similar tank for some of the older classic Vespa models are getting harder to find than the truth from your local MP.
A pain
Cleaning it, is also a real pain, although in some of the worst cases sadly unavoidable. It involves removing the tank and either spending hours with fresh petrol and a handful of clean nuts and bolts and shaking the tank, assuming you’ve adequately blocked the fuel filler and corresponding tap holes, for a couple of hours or so. Not ideal.
Resin
Or you could consider using a proprietary sealing resin such as Pet Seal but to do this effectively, you need to pretty well bung the Inlet and Outlet holes with something other than your existing fuel cap and tap, as the resin residue will render these unserviceable. Exercise caution here too, as some of these sealing agents, particularly if they are older stock, are not ethanol resistant. As we know, ethanol tends to be used in all modern fuel grades nowadays and you could cause more of a problem than you solve.
Beware
None ethanol resistant sealant will come away from your tank in filter blocking chunks and worse still, introduce very hard miniscule crystals into your fuel which will quickly wear out the multitude of moving parts including your carburettor, crank casing, barrel and piston.
An alternative
Steve Rushton has come up with a great alternative, which unless your tank is thoroughly rusted, should work a treat.
As you can see from the picture above the use of a simple magnet (in this case taken from a plundered fridge magnet) taped strategically under your tank near the fuel tap will attract the rust particals and hold them there. Allowing your fuel to pass through filters without clogging them.
Go to town?
If you really want to go to town and don’t mind a bit of extra expense, Steve informs us that stronger Iridium magnets are even better.
Is rust Magnetic?
Clearly Steve wanted to illustrate to us that his Top Tip actually works and does what it says on the tin (pardon the pun).
Tin test
As you can see from the before and after pictures above, rust scattered over the base of a metallic object, can be gathered together and concentrated with the aid of a magnet below the object itself.
Check it out
If you need further assurance take a look on Youtube, there are videos on the subject which bears out Steve’s theory here, not that we’d ever doubt him.
Give it a go.
I know from personal experience the misery and frustration that can be caused by a rusty tank. If you have a similar problem and quite a few of you will have, give it a go!
Worst case
What’s the worst that could happen? Chances are you may well solve the problem and if not, well you’ve got the more expensive and time consuming clean or replace option as a fall back…..good luck!
Thanks to: Steve Rushton for the Tip and Pics
Send yours in to: editorial@ScooterLab.UK
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Send them in to Editorial@ScooterLab.UK and title the email ‘Scooterist Tip’.
dose this realy work
Thanks for the comment Bill. In theory yes, especially with stonger iridium magnets as suggested by Steve in the feature. It’s born out on Youtube Videos too see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTR-Mm_lQA4 (best watched until the end). Steve also demonstrated this with the tin test shown in the feature. If you’re tank is heavily rusted though there is probably no better alternative than cleaning and / or sealing or indeed replacing as suggested in the latter part of the feature too. Hope this helps and good luck!