S30 Gas Tank - Paint Finish

[Hank240]

A very quick question for you wise folks - is the paint finish on the gas tank of my 1971 240 a gloss black or semi-gloss black ??

Thanks

Hank

[Carl Beck]

I'd call it a gloss black - because when it was new, you could wash and wax the gas tank to bring out a high gloss.

FWIW,

Carl B.

[Hank240]

Thanks so much for the quick reply Carl. As always, you are a wealth of knowledge.

Hank

[jerz]

Here are a couple of photographs of a NOS S30 tank for reference, albeit a later version, but the same finish as on a 1971 model.

[Hank240]

Excellent. Thanks for the pics jerz.

[bhermes]

I know that this is not really part of this post; however, I thought it might be ok to tag on. I have a slight gas leak and it appears it is coming from the tank. Last year I dropped the tank and got out a ton of rust, acid cleaned and red koted. The rust must have been keeping a small hole from leaking and the red kote did not fully seal up.

Any suggestions.

How about a coating on the outside of the tank that might seal up the small pin hole? How about welding on the tank. I have seen other posts with tank welding. The school where I teach has a very good welding program and thought I would ask but not sure if ssafe.

Thanks in advance.

[240260280z]

check the fitting for the send and return, they can de-solder.

[bhermes]

One reason I suspect the tank is that I believe the gas completely leaked out causing the car not to start. Not sure because the car had sat for a while and I charged the battery and added gas at the same time. I replaced all of the fuel lines at the tank, added 2 gallons of gas, and immediately took the car to the paint shop about 50 miles away. Thought that the leak was fixed (50 miles on 2 gallons); however, the paint shop said it was still leaking gas. They are looking at it to see if they can determine location. Again car is about an hour away and I have just not got an opportunity to look at myself.

Suspected sending unit o-ring but there should be some gas below that to start car. Maybe just not thinking about this correctly.

[Patcon]

I think welding is a bad idea. A good welding program can probably do it without blowing themselves up (i.e. clean the tank, nitrogen purge etc.) but the coating on the inside will burn or char and if the metal has pinholes it will be hard to weld on it with out burning more holes in the thin metal of the tank. I had pin holes like this on one of my f-350's tanks where mud had collected on the tank and rusted pinholes in it. I got some stuff from advance auto. I believe it was called goop. It is a fuel safe product in a tube where the sealants are in the store. I put a couple of coats over the area on my tank with it empty of fuel. That was years ago, leaks never came back...I drive it nearly every day.

Charles

[bhermes]

The gas leak is a pin hole in the tank. Apparently at some point in its life one of the straps was in contact with the tank without the protector in between. When I dropped the tank some time back it must have caused the pin hole. I believe I will try the stuff from advanced auto or use jb weld. I would also like to recoat the outside with red kote or similar product.