Fuel Tank - One Thing Leads To Another

I wanted to get the fuel gauge on my '62 CJ-5 working. I determined that it was the sender so I removed the driver's seat and the sender. I have been sucessful in getting the sender to work (the resistor element was apparently gummed up with fuel deposits - some carb cleaner did the trick). Since I was this close, I decided to remove the tank and inspect under it and give it a good shaking out. Lots of dirt under the tank, a little surface rust on the bottom and more surface rust on the floorpan under the tank. Two questions: First, what can I coat things with to arrest the rusting with minimal preparation - that is without grinding to bare metal, priming, and all of that? Sanding and grinding can lead to going all the way through, which leads to patching, etc. etc. Being under the tank, appearance is not an issue. Second, the tank was sitting on three strips of what kind of looks like really heavy duty tar paper that was glued to the tank. Anyone have ideas for an easily available substitute for these strips?

 

There's a few "paint-over-rust" type products out there. I think Mike Boyink used something called Hammerlite or tite or something along those lines - I'm sure he'll chip in before too long with his advice!

There's also POR-15, but that requires more prepwork from what I've heard.

There's another rust preventative called Rust Encapsulator from Eastwood, but I don't remember if it's paint-over-rust or not. HTH

 

por-15 works good. mine was so bad i had to replace the tank and the floor! the tank was actually leaking gas into the cab when i got it thanks to the po's brilliant idea of putting carpet padding under the tank. just collected moisture and rusted right through.

my new floor is por-15'd and hurculined and the tank is just por-15'd. por-15 doesn't need a lot of prep on rusted surfaces, when you use it on good metal you do need to prep quite a bit.

chris

 

OSPHO is a great rust prep that I use all the time. It is basicly phosphoric acid, it attacks the iron oxide converting it to iron phosphate. Just clean off all the lose rust. Spary on the OSPHO let it soak. Rinse and paint. It will turn the rust black. I have Herculiner on my floors. You can find the OSPHO at Home Depot in the paint dept in quarts or gallon bottles.