Tank Sealant

maylar said:

Just as an FYI - I got an email add from POR this morning with this add...

http://app.simplycast.com/email_view.ph ... no=4296639

drc

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Wonder if anyone following this thread would be happy to take a medicine that had not been tested first, simply on the strength of advertising blurb from its producers? Obviously taking an untested medicine could have very nasty results, so these are things that get tested petty comprehensively.

The fact that no tank sealer has ever been properly tested by its manufacturer, does seem to suggest that for anyone who has a product that does actually work, and was willing to have it independently tested, could pretty much corner what seems to be a relatively lucrative market!

hobot said:

OK I've some Caswells 2 part epoxy left over 7 yr now, so will try coating glass and plastic containers and maybe a piece of fiberglass and put in good dose of EverClear ethanol plus 91 octane gas then wait and see what happens. Boat repair place near by, will see what resins they have on hand and scraps. The boat folks with built in tanks really suffered expensively when they got ethanol in them. Heating of course speeds up ethanol's dissolving powers.

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What, and waste some perfectly good EverClear?

Ken

Hey Ken, Yeah I'd sacrifice some taxed stamped ethanol to test for Norton life and times. Weather is predicated nice on Sunday so Wes coming over to put more of Trixie Combat together, so will take a break and mix up Caswell and get some test samples coated to test booze tolerance. Wes and I both have FG tanks with Caswell in them over 6 yr now, so far so good but we don't get that must ethanol gas here, so maybe not a valid test. I did leave gas in Peel's IS tank for almost 3 yr before I dumped it to paint. Caswell still intact and just hard enough it takes a sharp point to nick it. Screw driver edge is not sharp enough to put a dent in it.

I'm impressed enough with the strength and compliance of Caswell I'd seriously consider using it to assemble a cut apart tank or even build a whole tank out of it on a mold.

Btw, good double and triple thumped moonshine is the only ethanol I can really get a stupor on and not suffer later. A thump means one pass through the worm coil, each time removes more water till about 96% ethanol. Ms Peel got a few shots of 'shine in her FG during break in, and one in me too before letting her hair out the first time.

In some cases a snake oil tank sealer may well work perfectly, but the fact that the manufacturers of such products have not bothered to commission any proper independent testing, using a more aggressive control fuel, does seem to suggest they are well aware that failure is almost inevitable, bearing in mind the level of dilution thats being applied to the resins on which their products are based!

Applying a snake oil to ensure a much greater film thickness, will increase chemical resistance though, as heat generated during cure is going to be substantially greater and elevated temperature cure will provide ore chemical resistance , even if resins used have been watered down to increase profits.

OK hope my acetone prep and thick all around Caswell snake oil coating holds up. Its was the best we knew about ~ a decade ago. Don't think the coat was thick enough to get significantly warm, but I kept tank turning till excess in mix bowl was pretty darn stable set up. I got almost 1/4" thick coating, can see its depth on the center hump as clear when set up. If that thick on hump then should be similar on less drain off prone area. Really was concerned about tank front crushing till got a few 1000 miles use after wards and lost all concern til you made me pensive again. i used Caswell in steel roadster tank for rust, so have 2 experiments road going plus the non tank testing for peace of mind or lack of it soon.

If you have 1/4 film thickness, the heat achieved during cure will have been 2 or 3 times as much as it would be in most cases, and this means much greater chemical resistance. However applying epoxy this thick, can if you are unlucky destroy a tank, as there will be some contraction during the cure process, and this is generally greater with thicker coatings.

To check out the amount of heat generated during the epoxy cure process, mix up about 200cc of resin in a fireproof container of some sort, add the required amount of catalyst, and watch what happens............in most cases the mix will get so hot its smoking, and in some cases it will actually catch fire! This is a very good reason to be very cautious about disposing of uncured epoxy, as it can and does result in fires!