How To Fix A Cracked Plastic Gas Tank

well maybe you just dropped your hedge trimmer or your weed eater or your chainsaw on the ground and hit a rock and now you've got a crack on the bottom of your fuel tank you hold it up in a pours gas out big crack there you've got two choices here guys you either got to replace your tank or repair it today I'm going to show you how I repair a cracked plastic fuel tank good day boys and girls welcome back to Steve small linen saloon again Steve small and saloon dot-com right there that's my website check it out when you get a chance I am gonna use today a stubby bottle right here of cores of banquet beer you could probably use whatever kind of beer you want for this job it shouldn't take you any more than about one beer to do this job if it does take you more than one beer hey guys I'm not judging I have tried several things in the past to repair a crack on a plastic fuel tank on one of these things number-one thing you guys are all gonna be saying probably a seal all that seal all right there you know what I'm not dissing seal all at all but what I call this is a temporary fix no matter how well that you prepared the crack you can sand it down you can alcohol swab it you put that seal all on there it does work but it will still leak again after time why I call it a temporary fix so I'm looking for something different to do here I've heard from lots of guys out there hey you know what you use a piece of trimmer line you take your trimmer line cut a piece of that off or a zip tie zap strap whatever you want to call that and you use that plastic you take a soldering iron like that and you just melt that plastic into the crack and that's gonna solve your problems well guys I've tried this numerous times no matter how well I prepared that crack - I put that foreign plastic in there and after it's all cooled and drive in everything I can take a little screwdriver and literally just grab it with a screwdriver and and peel it and just rip it right off like a band-aid it doesn't stick properly to it that's again I think that's a temporary fix and then I'm thinking to myself well why am i adding more plastic foreign plastic I think is this is what I think is the problem without is that it's a different chemical composition for that plastic - what the plastic isn't that fuel tank it's not bonding properly so why am i adding foreign plastic into that there's more than enough plastic on that tank I don't need to add more plastic to it so here's what I do right now I'm going to take you through and this has never failed me yet since I've started doing this first thing you want to do is obviously dump all your fuel out of your out of your there's gonna be some fuel in there right so dump it all out pick your fuel cap off and leave it off we don't want negative pressure or positive pressure in that tank when we're actually doing this repair it can cause bubbles coming out through the repair when we're melting that plastic down so take that fuel cap and put it aside and leave it off dump all your fuel out obviously and we don't want any fuel fumes in there I know that hope I know that a lot of you guys that are saying right now well a little soldering iron like this can't possibly create a spark or anything and ignite those fumes I agree with you 100% on that I don't think so either but do the best you can to get all that fuel out of there and all the fumes out of there air compressor dump that out into a can and just blast it out blast it out as best as you can so there's no more fumes and it's dry in there next thing we want to do is prepare that crack I think this is a really good thing to do I think this is actually quite essential to prepare the crack properly before we do this so what I do I'm just putting this little thing under here so I can action it's holding it at the right angle for me now see that crack right there you can clearly see that crack it's all dirty and oily in there and everything what we want to do now is take a little piece of sandpaper or emery cloth whatever you have and we want to just really polish that crack up as best as we can here keep on sanding that thing down until it looks really clean and you can really clearly see that crack once you get that down sanded like that as best as you can what I do because there's still gonna be some oil and some fuel you know some of your Mex fuel from your from your gas and everything in there it's not gonna stick the plastics not going to stick together good enough so what I do is I just take some alcohol not that kind of alcohol I know this is Steve small engine salon but hey I'm not even gonna drink this stuff rubbing alcohol little cotton swab just get rid of that oil rub that real good with that oil or sorry without rubbing alcohol get all that oil off that you can really prepare that thing really good because when we start melting this with a soldering iron now it's gonna work a lot better I know this because I've done this many times and I've experimented with this many times so do that and now that what's the next step I already had my soldering iron all heating up since we've been doing this video so I know this is nice and hot now so now here's what I do I don't worry about that foreign plastic or anything on here what I do is I take that soldering iron right there and I I dig it right down in the groove I I kind of melt that groove down like that and kind of dig that right down like that don't go right through the tank but just melt a nice trench in there because that's what that trench we're making right there is where we're going to add the more put more plastic into there so do that and we got that all clean it looks pretty good if you have to you know if you've melted a little bit of stuff off there just hit it with another piece of sandpaper and and get rid of that before we go any further now I just kind of scooped the plastic over just be really patient with this scoop the plastic over to one side like that see how that works you're kind of pushing the plastic that's already on the tank over into that little trench that little groove that we just made there keep melting that until it's nice liquidy plastic in there and then once that trench is full just kind of go around circles is what I do I go around circles like this until it's all nice and liquidy and everything in there get that in as good as you can go overboard if you want to scoop a lot more plastic in there do what you have to do to get that trench full and all melt it all to the sides and everything like that and once you get that done like that you know what I think we're probably done here I'll bet you anything now hold on there's some fuel put a little fuel in there cap back on now so we actually could get some pressure in there now from shaking it around that's what we want watch this look at that that is absolutely fixed there is not a it's not getting wet it's there's not a drop of fuel getting through that and when do you shake it like this it actually does create a little bit of pressure in that tank so it should be pushing through there if even if you have the tiniest little pinhole in there it would be at least getting wet right there and it is not wet in the least bit that fixed up you guys that's done that's what that's not temporary fix right there I honestly believe that is a permanent fix I've been doing that for the last many times I've done these and I've never seen one come back yet that says oh it's leaking again so I truly hope that really helped you guys out there I hope yet that saved you some money as usual that works for me you guys give me that thumbs up button give me that like button share this with your friends subscribe to my channel if you already haven't put some comments down underneath this video right here and tell me what you thought maybe you guys got another suggestion for this let me know I love hearing your comments till the next video guys that's it for me Coors Banquet stubby Stevo

Channel: Steve's Small Engine Saloon

Views: 313,572

Keywords: how, to, do, diy, lawn, replace, cut, tutorial, help, broken, stroke, four, two, garden, small, engine, repair, fix, learn, hedge, brush, start, simple, basic, easy, generator, mower, riding, blower, chain, saw, weed, eater, trimmer, grass, install, blade, bar, properly, tips, tricks, efficiently, google, stihl, husqvarna, husky, echo, honda, shindiawa, pressure, washer, hand, held, wont, dull, not, direction, diagnose, save, money, tech, clogged, bogging, idle, up, weedeater, outdoor, power, equipment, leaf blower, lawnmower, crack, plastic, gas, fuel, tank

Id: 62kTNwtPmE8

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2019