I shut down the blast cabinet, and pulled the tank out and there was a little water trickling out. After I cleaned the tank of the old gas I put a couple of ounces of water in it before media blasting, just in case there were some pin holes that I might miss. It worked, although when using this technique, make sure you drain the water out and get some WD 40 in there as soon as your finished stripping the paint so rust does net rear its ugly head.
Unfortunately for me this had already had happened. There were several pin holes by the bottom seam of the tank producing water. I had a couple of choices to make now, try and fix the tank myself by cutting out the bad metal and replacing it with good. I thought this would be too time consuming given my limited metal working skills. So I could scour eBay looking for a used tank, and more than likely ending up with the same problem I have now. Buy a brand new tank from Yamaha for around four hundred bucks, which would put a serious dent in my rebuild budget. Or I could choose option four which is to buy an plastic replacement tank from Clarke Manufacturing and not have to worry about dents or rust for as long as I own this bike. Clarke makes replacement tanks for a wide variety of bikes, so if your looking for a replacement for your current tank, Clarke may just have what your looking for.
As you can plainly see, the Clarke tank route is the road I choose to point my bike down, For less than half the price of an OEM Yamaha replacement, I bought myself a tank I don’t really have to worry about. The tank looks about as good as the stocker and has a bit more fuel capacity 4.0 gallons to the stockers 3.2 this will get me a bit farther down the road. I have busted down the motor and am getting all its bits and pieces in order. I have not come across any surprises in the engine as of yet. Every thing has been within specs so far. I am getting the all the cases ready for paint and should be getting the motor back together in the next week or two.
Till Next Time...........................
