1966 L79 Chevy II w/ 4365 miles

[Jamess113]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye

Jay, congratulations on your purchase of this amazing Chevy II.

Can you explain the tank cleaning process? Who is doing it? Will the patina on the outside of the tank be affected at all?

Thanks, Marty

Thanks Marty! We've sent them out in the past but in most cases we have just replaced them but, that's not an option here though. So we're doing the tank in house ourselves as I don't want lose any of the originality of the tank. We do want the outside clean of dirt and grim but we don't want to lose any of the factory undercoating that's on it and to be honest this is the first one I've ever done one and it has gone very well.

Basically we drained the gas, removed the tank, dried the inside and then I just used some of the the metal cleaner (PPG SX579) we use to clean lightly rusted parts here in the shop. I just pored a gallon in and sloshed it around throughout the a day and let it sit over night then flushed it out with water the next morning. To dry the inside I then stuck an air hose inside the tank and then vacuumed out any leftovers with small hose taped to my vacuum with my bore-scope attached so I could see what I was doing. The tank actually looks pretty good in side now but I'll most like do another round just to make sure we're good to go. This time I'll dilute the mixture with water, 1 part SX579 to 2 parts of water. The biggest thing here is to make sure you don't get any cleaner on the the outside of the tank as it will stain it. Hope that help.