De-rusted gas tank
Decided that 5 days of electrolysis was probably enough for the gas tank. After all, I wasn’t trying to strip any really serious thick rust…just clean up the surface and brighten the metal in general. Well, it worked!
Before:
After:
And incidentally, here’s what happens to the nice shiny coat hanger electrode:
To make sure that there were no loosely-bound rust flakes that would break off and float into the gas line, I dumped a bunch of half-inch brass weights into the tank and shook it around for a while. That was unbelievably noisy but I think it worked, because after a while water poured through the tank came out clear. There’s still some spots of rust here and there inside, but nothing a fuel filter can’t handle. Overall I pronounce this experiment a success. So successful, in fact, that I decided to use it for other parts as well. I poured a bunch of the electrolyte into a bucket, dropped in some scrap steel as an anode, and suspended the rusty kick starter and shifter linkage in there to see what happens: