Mildly rusted 185s tank?

[jl5086]

My 185s tank is mostly all still bare unrusted mental inside, only small little dots of rust and a thin layer on the very bottom. I am repainting the tank and wonder if I should do red kote even though the tank obviously has no leaks, and is mostly still unrusted inside. I also worry if I clean the little bit of surface rust on the inside, and repaint the tank, I will be very regretfull if that process created a seam leak or something, leading to me having to cote it and repaint afterwards. I guess maybe I'm mostly after some opinions as to whether to do it (cote) or not, since it is in such great shape already.

Thanks.

I'll try to get some pics of the inside, since it's kind of speculative.

[jl5086]

I guess I can't put the pics up, since you can only put URL links, and I don't have anywhere to post them.

[350for350]

My opinion is that if there's very little rust in the tank, you wouldn't have to use any type of coating. If it was me, I would put some rocks, small nuts (like 1/4), or something similar in the tank and then shake it around for a few minutes to loosen up the worst of the rust. Then I would empty out whatever you put in there and just use it. You could put a little bit of gas in the tank and slosh it around and drain it to flush the tank out before you use it. Do this a couple of times. By doing this, you could still get a little bit of rust in your carb. That's just a FYI. I've done this before and had good results with it. A tip to help keep the rust away is to fill the tank after you ride it. My 350X got a very slight bit of rust in the tank last summer from the high humidity that we had. I started to refill the tanks after each ride. It's kind of a hard habit to get in to (at least for me), but it's pretty easy to do now. Another good thing about this is that you don't have to worry whether or not you have enough gas in the tank the next time you want to ride it.

[jl5086]

The more I look inside the tank, there really is almost no rust, so I probably will just clean it out. I mostly was just questioning whether or not coating the inside was ever done on really good tanks, as a preventive/ improvement, plus the fact that I did pop a few dents out from the inside and I don't know if that could make any of the seams more susceptible to leak at some point. If the tank should ever need coating, I would think it's smarter to do it before finish painting it.

[350for350]

In that case, just use some gas to flush it out a couple of times and just run it.

[Baba Yaga]

Use vinegar to clean the tank out. You definitely don't want to coat it if it's relatively rust-free.

[Maynard James]

Absolutely not and in fact you should never use it. It's a hack repair. It will ALWAYS eventually end up delaminating and/or clogging some part of your fuel system.