Gas tank restoration

[Burd]

While we’re on this topic, what are the 2 straps to be pained or what? (GM)

Now you got me going on this, I’m going to clean a spot with something to see what it looks like. I remember seeing blue steel,company names on the tanks, i don’t want to remove that. Do all tanks have this mark?

[R68GTO]

Tank straps are painted black, not sure if 30 or 60% gloss. Photo of my strap below, original black paint evident where the strap was tight to the tank.
As far as the steel manufacturer's mark on the tank. Those are stencils that were applied to the strip after it was cold rolled to the final gauge at the mill. I do not know if there was a required or standard spacing of that stencil when it was applied, but there would have definitely been a space between stencils. If the spacing was close enough, you could potentially have it appear on every tank made from the steel coil shipped to the tank manufacturer, but you can be fairly sure it would not "land" in the same place on every tank.
Our business slits millions of tons of steel every year for all the domestic steel mills and apply stencils to some of that metal. These days the stencil requirements are everything from continuous through the entire coil to just marking different areas of the coil. The requirements are generally driven by traceability for quality purposes.

[70post]

Originally Posted by Burd

While we’re on this topic, what are the 2 straps to be pained or what? (GM)

Now you got me going on this, I’m going to clean a spot with something to see what it looks like. I remember seeing blue steel,company names on the tanks, i don’t want to remove that. Do all tanks have this mark?

Depends on the GM division and/or the plant.....Oldsmobiles are galvanized steel straps with no paint. Looking at the Fisher Body video showing a Monte Carlo it looks like those were black as mentioned by someone else. Could have also changed depending on model year I guess. I've dealt with a massive number of Oldsmobiles and they're always galvanized/no paint so there is some variation. Same thing on the Buicks I've dealt with and seen (at least '70-72)...galvanized w/no paint.

I've also had plenty of clean original tanks with no evidence of the large ink/paint stamp.....must have been fairly widely disbursed on those rolls of steel back then.