I'm not sure any rust treatment will kill rust reliably. I've not found one that does.
But I reckon, for the tank, I've got as much rust off as humanly possible and then I just need to keep water and oxygen away from it. The paint pretty much does that but I doubt if a coat of Hydrate 80 is going to hamper that. With a bit of luck it'll slow things down so that I'll not have to worry about it again.
It's an interesting topic though. I've been using rust killers for years and none of them kill rust dead. But I think the bigger problem was that, in the olden days, I had no way to remove the rust properly or to get a paint coating that would protect it in the long term. Those were the days of bunging the hole up with body filler and slapping some paint over the top.
My techniques have moved on a bit since then. I hope.
Anyway...
I suppose I just need a nice day and I can get it back on the car.
Except…
Except? Except what?
Apart from the weather what’s stopping you putting the tank back in the car?
Well, er… Here’s a photo of the tank taken the first time I removed it.
What’s that I’ve circled in red?
Some numbers printed on the top?
Let’s take a closer look.
Oh, ok. It’s the date the tank was made. The 28th of November, 1985.
Well it’s gone now. I scrubbed it off and painted it a shiny black colour.
No… Don’t tell me… You’re not going to fit the tank because you want to stamp the bloody date back on the top!? I mean, it’s on top of the tank! Nobody can see it. Even if it was on the bottom it’s behind splash shields and nobody could ever see it…
You are, aren’t you? You are going to stamp the date on the top again.
Oh man, this bloke’s got issues.
Well, a man doesn’t always need a good reason to do something and I’m going to prove that now.
The original date was stamped on. Not brilliantly accurately either. I don’t have a stamp, I’m not going to buy one, and I can’t work out how to make one with reasonable accuracy. So we are going to do something slightly different that pays homage to the original. Something that they might have done if they hadn’t used the stamp.
A few years ago I’d played with stencil fonts so I wondered if I could print the date on stiff paper, cut out the black bits with a craft knife and spray through it.
I messed about with this idea for a while but the problem was going to be accurately cutting the black bits away.
Then I realised that Helix, the people who make plastic rulers, also make plastic stencils. You can buy a set of 3 in different sizes. I know this because I bought a set of 3 in different sizes.
All I had to do was to stick the stencil on the tank and mask off the appropriate digit.
I had a piece of card with a digit sized hole cut in it to finish the masking.
And a glove to avoid painting my hand white.
The only problem with this method was that I had to spray a digit and wait for it to dry before spraying the next one. The whole process took about a week.
So how did this pointless exercise turn out?
It turned out like this.
There is a bit of blow under the stencil but that sort of reflects the feel of the original stamp so I’m happy with it. I could have wiped the paint off and done it again if I’d really wanted to. And let’s face it, nobody will ever see this again.
But I’ll know it’s there and so will you so that makes it worth it.
Please tell me we can put the tank in now?
James