CX500 Build - Fuel Tank Mods PT1 - Cutting A BIG Hole In The Tank... EP53

[Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] all right guys guys let's get real nerdy here we need to clean this fuel tank and because i'm going to do a flush mount cap in it i want to work with the cleanest metal possible and this thing does have a little surface rust within it and i know that it also has evidence of an old liner in it so i want to try to clean the inside of the tank as much as possible before i really start working with it and cutting it open so what we're going to do is some electrolysis all right so what is electrolysis you might ask well i'm no chemistry teacher so i can't explain it very well but what we're going to do is we're going to use a battery and we're going to negatively charge the tank and use a sacrificial piece of metal called an anode we're going to stick it in here with a solution within the tank and basically we're going to transfer electrons through that liquid and then this is going to turn rusty because of all the rust that's in the tank that's the boiled down real simple version but this is not difficult to do at all so what you need just some pool cleaning chemical this is just sodium carbonate you can get that i think that's in also like oh like arm and hammer or something like that but i've had this thing for three years now and getting towards the end so it was ten dollars very well worth it but what we're gonna do is we're going to use a uh i usually use a spray paint cap for uh my fuel tanks here because you want to have a little airflow and you do not want the metal uh waste rod you know the anode to touch the tank so it has to float in suspension so we're gonna put the cap over this we're gonna tape it down and then we're going to put the rod right through here and then it will fit within the liquid and bend and then our negative battery cable is going to be attention to the tank and all of this is going to be all magical and it's gonna be awesome so anyway i'm gonna work on getting this hooked up and you will soon soon see what i'm talking about but first i need to go get a full bucket filled with hot water works better with hot water and i plan to leave this overnight so step one so the key is here we do not want this to touch any of the metal and you have to keep in mind the the spine of the tank here don't want that to touch otherwise you'll be working backwards so wiggle that around and then you got to think whenever you put your cable on here it's going to put some tension so just be sure that it's going to stay put so what i usually do is i will physically like tape tape the cap down to the tank and then i'll try to stabilize this the best i can but the longer you can get this in here or the longer piece you can use the better because this does actually wear out pretty quick and you will be surprised what it looks like tomorrow all right so to keep this thing sealed up i have a plug on the fuel tap here but i always keep them over another container and then as far as the solution amount i put about a cup of the sodium carbonate in here oh boy the big tank of course you use the bucket or use the uh the tote to catch any liquid or in my case catch no liquid whatever that's either here or there now quickly i'm going to hook up these cables and show you what this looks like now the negative goes to the tank okay you want to clip that to a decent decent clean piece of metal on the tank itself so just as an example just watch right here if you can see any of the bubbles coming up towards that rod but that's that reaction happening you know instantly and you can see right there already it's doing work and we're just gonna let this go all night so i'm gonna set this down and get it hooked up properly we'll go from there it's probably a little hard to see but i have the ground hooked up to the rear fuel tank mount i know i'm covering up some of my holes but nothing i'll just poke back through them so this might look a little funky right now but i've done this once once or seven times just trying to keep keep that as stable as i can while we have tension from that on there of course these are like the cheesiest freaking jumper cables hmm all right you can just hear it fizzing away all right so here's the setup go into our anode and the cathode is basically the tank and i have the negative cable under here hooked to the tank hooked up to the battery and then importantly the battery has a charger on it now this is only running uh two amps which is i wish it was more but that's the biggest charger i have uh available to me right now but that'll do the job it's a fresh battery out of my truck and yeah i'll probably check back in uh maybe a few hours or something like that it should be you know like you have to scoop out the crap but that just means it's working so check back maybe in a few hours and then um clean it off hook it back up and and see what it looks like in the morning all right it is like 7 00 am the next morning we've been running this thing all night has a little bit of temperature still i called about 75 degrees or so anyway i'm going to go ahead and try to show you what it looks like mmm delicious here you can see just how gnarly that thing is that transfer of electrons and this one causes the oxidation so if you use this a few times this will actually you can see it getting pitted and eaten away pretty fascinating but this is actually really safe you know in in comparison to other things you can do in the shop this is actually a really safe thing you can do so you just clean this off like this solution is probably still good right now it can lose a little bit of its ability but i can go ahead and just see if it still wants to work and just let it keep doing its thing same test as before it's a little bit weakened it's still doing something but not to the severity that it would before so what i'll do is i'll go ahead and just drain this thing and then i will make another round of solution and just do it again now one thing i don't want to do is just uh drain this without flushing it and uh not trying to clean it out or at least you know or or keeping the sides exposed where it has just you know it was wet and then it just has fresh you know exposed metal to the air because that will just you know cause oxidation so i do plan to line this tank like i said so i'm just trying to get it uh cleaned up a little bit beforehand before we try the uh you know using the chemical to help strip and prep the tank anyway i'm just rambling but i'm gonna go ahead and do this all over again and then by the end of this uh we'll probably start you know we'll get a hole cut and then we will uh start trying to pick out that old liner and stuff in there but just doing what we can [Music] you

Channel: Brick House Builds

Views: 1,325

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: cx500 deluxe, cafe racer, cx500 build, cafe racer build, cafe racer garage, racer tv, for the bold, brick house builds, jish, fuel tank electrolysis, electrolysis rust removal, motorcycle flush mount fuel cap, fort9, cx500 how to, gl650 cafe, gl500 cafe, cx500, 46works, motorcycle fabrication, motorcycle how to, cx500 exhaust, cx500 review, cx650, cx500 engine swap, killswitch queen, matthewmcrepair, classic octane, lowbrow customs, dime city cycles, cafe racer how to

Id: MhyPT_2Fruc

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020