If at first you don't succeed....

Post date: Feb 4, 2013 12:56:34 AM

Try, try again. And Again.

Behold, gas tank v2.2:

Back in Nov I got under the car and noticed a gas leak from the tank mod. Turns out the gas ate through the epoxy along the front.

I had been thinking about learning how to ace/oxy weld anyway, so I went to Harbor Freight and got the torch kit. Craigslist provided an acetylene B cylinder and a 80ft Oxygen cylinder for $50 each! Garland Welding Supply provided a few extra tips and flashback arrestors. For reference, I think I've gon through 60 ft ace and 80 ft Oxy so far. Thankfully Home Depot swapped out the cylinders without a second glance, even though they probably shouldn't have.

Fun story: the oxy tank was half full when I got it and had a medical regulator on it. It was clearly a welding tank. The guy didn't know much about it, said he only had it a couple of months. I hope he wasn't feeding granny some cheap oxygen.

So Gas Tank v2.0 was the same basic design - got a baking pan, made a reinforcement ring of 16ga steel, welded in with lap welds. I started with the other gas tank.

Leaked like crazy. The bend sections of the tank are pretty thin. I think the nominal is 18ga, but around the creases is 20 to 22ga, so all that stuff just melts away. I had also JB welded in the reinforcement ring prior to welding in the pan, and the welding heat just baked it out.

All that got cut out, including a bunch of damaged areas around it. I made a pan from 16ga steel, and some of those welds came out really good:

The base plate warped a bit, but thankfully arched upward. I tried brazing in the bolts and no reinforcement ring.

I weld that one in. Leaked like crazy,

Cut out more chunks and just slapped on huge patches with lap welds. Attempts to make a proper patch and butt weld just didn't work out.

Leaked, but not terribly.

I coated the bad sections with JB Quik on the inside, plus some on the outside near the top. Now it leaked around the pump seal because there was a bad dip warp right by one of the bolts. Tried pounding that out, then filled it in with a bit more epoxy.

Success! All of this took quite a while.

Or, at least, it leaks slow enough that I figure it won't blow up. I'm tired of messing with it, so there it is. I still need to fill it all the way up and make sure it isn't leaking.

One of the bolts broke free because I had to break some stray epoxy off of it. I think that one warp is still a bit of an issue. So the next time the tank comes out, I need to re-fix that one bolt and probably put in a reinforcement ring. With more epoxy. And paint the tank. And probably do another coating of tank seal - I just used the leftover stuff this time..

The other option is a Rick's Tank. I don't think they have vents, but they'd do anything for more money. Only problem is it's ~$1,200 and wouldn't make any use of anything I've done so far. I think this tank is about $700 (including welding stuff and materials) and easily 160 hours. Yikes.

Hopefully I can get back to work on the body, separate the frame and make usable progress.

Even though it sat for almost three months it fired right up and ran beautifully.