| Author | Message | ||
     Greg_cifu |
Hmmm...I thought posting to the old thread would bump it out of archive. I guess not. I'll try it again here: http://www.badweatherbikers.com/buell/messages/476 23/644048.html?1318727067 After fueling my 1991 Westwind for the Pro Italia show, I had to drain the tank today. As noted before, the lining in the tank is flaking pretty badly but, the outside is still perfect. After pulling the tank off and removing the cap bung, I ended up with my hand inside the tank, taking the opportunity to scrape some debris loose. It didn't take much to remove a heaping salad bowl of flaked lining. After that, I tossed about a pound of deburring triangles in there with water and Dawn dishwashing soap. That removed even more. I'd say that about 2/3rd of the coating is gone. What should I do about the rest? What remains seems pretty secure. Everything I've read says that MEK will destroy the polyester resin in the glass. There is a business I met at the show last weekend that relines fiberglass tanks with a nylon-like material. They said that it will encapsulate the remaining coating. My fear is that if they're wrong, nothing will ever stick to that material again. The question: does anybody have direct experience with either one of the new coatings in a fiberglass tank or with the newer plastic coating? I'm going to get one shot at doing this right and I can't afford it to be screwed up. I'm so worried about leaving the tank at a shop that I bought a 2x6 today to make wooden protectors for the side flanges on the tank (the front mounting hole looks way to easy to break). Is that material ACTUALLY Kreem brand lining or some other brand or material? How can I get it out or, SHOULD I even try to remove it? What have others done? Are the Battletwin tanks the same? What have they done? | ||
| Hotrats |
i used kbs tank sealer. epoxy type sealer- gets rock hard. seemed to work ok. but really didn't keep gas in it too long, as i don't ride it. my rs is cali kit #13, was registered in co. which required a vin to be affixed to the frame. | ||
| Greg_cifu |
How do you know which kit it was? I thought they didn't even know how many RS vs RSS kits there were, much less which in the sequence they were. Yeah, the problem with the sealer getting rock hard is that I believe stiffness contributed to the original lining failing in the first place. The areas where the most sealer came off on its own, are the broad, flatter areas of the interior. There are still considerable deposits in every corner and a very thick deposit up in the high-crown area just ahead of the filler hole. Heck, that piece is rock hard, with just a few cracks and I can't get it to budge. It feels (from inside to outside) like it's an inch thick. High crown = high stiffness, low crown = low stiffness. The flat areas are not even close to rigid. As I was scraping and poking around, I could feel the base of the tank pushing out under heavy finger pressure. It's a pretty thin and without the benefit of curvature, it moves around a lot. I'm sure that the weight of a tank of fuel and normal road shock and vibration cause it to flex all over the place--something normal liners don't have to contend with in a steel tank. Whatever lining goes in there, has to be flexible enough to vibrate with the walls and elastic enough to not fail if a chunk of the remaining lining breaks away from the fiberglass. | ||
| Hotrats |
i'll have to dig up the letters between the owner & buell. he had this for verification for the co. registration. maybe my memory has lapsed, and i'm wrong on the number. on the liner, i guess i'll just have to see if the liner lasts. at the rate i'm putting miles on it now - well, it will last a long time. a very nice example you have. of course, everyone knows the blue rs's are the fastest....  | ||
| Leftcoastal |
Greg - you're right about the front tabs being a weak spot - the 'spare' white RS bodywork I had (HAD being the actuality) was broken at the reserve switches. Treat like eggs there. I saw a company at the El Camino show a couple weeks ago that made the same claims about the coating they had - I'll try to locate their contact info for you. Might be the same outfit. Al | ||
| Greg_cifu |
Thanks, Al. Yeah, it's probably the same guys (based in North Hollywood). They have a couple of different coatings depending on the tank material and needs. I've dug through the archives here and I can't seem to find any definitive answer to this problem. A couple used Kreem with mixed results. This is hardly an isolated problem. Many Nortons had fiberglass tanks, as did Rickmans, Laverdas, Ducati dirt bikes and many more I can't even remember. They can't all be making new gas tanks. This bike won't get ridden a lot but, it would be nice to not have it nagging to drain the tank after every outing. For the past week, every whiff of fuel had me thinking it was the Westwind's tank blowing a hole through that paint.  | ||
| Hotrats |
greg- dug up the CO. registration papers and the build sheet for my RS. both listed the vin as KIT013. hth | ||
| Greg_cifu |
Hmmm...build sheet...don't have one of those. My Westwind's VIN ends in kit but no digits. The guy's name that does the tank lining (from the Cafe Desmo show) is Tony Markus. I guess if I were more into the custom and restoration world, I'd have known who he is. http://www.tmarkus.com/ Now that I know he also does custom paint, graphics and body restoration, maybe it's time to get one of the tanks painted that I bought for this Trackmaster Yamaha. This original Trackmaster tank with molly graphics was also destroyed by modern gasoline (too far gone to fix--glass is all delaminating inside the filler neck). This was purchased three years ago and I've never heard it run.  | ||
| Greg_cifu |
Update: I finally made it to see Tony Markus today and we discussed repair options for the Westwind's tank. One issue we came up with was the sealing of the aluminum inserts that retain the cap bung. Question for the old time Buell guys: when that ring was made, were the inserts pressed in, machined as part of the ring or something else? They are definitely raised and I doubt that was a CNC part that long ago. I'm guessing they're pressed into a flat ring with holes drilled in it. If that turns out to be true, I may make a puller to remove them from the ring and another tool to pull-in new, sealed inserts (blind thread holes). The goal is to 100% seal the interior of the tank, right to the cap. The threads currently allow gasoline to make it to the surface paint. I want to stop that leak path. I may make those parts available to others if it works out well. Court? Dave? Somebody? |
