Hi all.
Last night I started to work on my fuel tank but it's about a inch think in waxoyl along with every thing else under the car, now the way I've got it off all the other parts is warm it up with a cooking blow torch and scrap off witha knife or scrapper, then clean what's left with the wire wheel on my bench polisher, but the fuel tank is too big to get on he wire wheels and I don't really fancy warming it up, obviouse reasons! So what chemical will soften up the waxoyl?
Cheers dave

 

Ta john I'll give it a shoot, unless someone else comes along with a tried and test idea.

 

petrol or a proper steam cleaner are really the only ways mate.

 

i used thinners and a stiff brush i.e alloy wheel brush.

 

Iwas just using thinner at work and thinking if it would do the job, might borrow a coke bottle of it.

 

Tar remover does the trick, breaks it down and you can wipe it off

 

Petrol or panel wipe,

If you catch it alight, it comes of very quickly, but messy though!

I found the latter out through experience!!

 

Petrol or thinners mate and lots of elbow grease,make sure its well aired though

 

Hahaha,

Elbow grease as twins said! White spirit and a wire brush on the angle grinder. Some bits you can leave the white spirit on and wipe off with a few good rags, if you are careful you can get just the waxoil off with the wire brush and leave the original ford paint in place.

Should look like this when your done (not that its done!)





But be well prepared to look worse than this (early photo, much worse later lol) and to get in loads of shit when you track wax oil through the house



Good luck

Rob,

 

Well iv got a small coke bottle of cell**** thinners and two new scrappers. I'm finishing work in an hour so fingers crossed it will be primered tonight.

 

I would wire brush it rob, but the only ones iv got man enough for the job are on my bench polisher and I can't really hole the tank agenced that as it's a bit big!
I looked wores than that last night rob taking the wax of the arb, only clean part of my face was where my glasses cover and dust mask!

 

P.s your cars looking good? Think it will be at central day?

 

haha central day??? NO CHANCE lol was going to get all the welding done this weekend, but am about to but a TIG welder plus my panels haven't turned up

Yes the photo of me was taken before i used white spirit, after that i was just black. Sorry mate i didn't read your post properly i thought you were removing waxoil from the underside not the petrol tank, i probably wouldn't put anything sparky near that tbh. Soffen it with white spirit then use thinners for the last bits, i found the thinners evaporated too quickly to sofen large areas, but it did little nasty sports really well.

Best of luck mate, PS i will probably be at central day without car so if i see you i'll say hello.

Rob,

 

Oh yea and by wire brush i mean the ones you bolt onto your angle grinder, they are the bollocks mate,

Rob,

 

haha I remember the underside re paint days well. If I were to do it again I would deffo buy a roll over jig

Petrol worked well for me.

 

You don't have any excuses any way mate! by the looks of it you have a whacking great barn!!!! i can't tell you how jealous that makes me.

If i were to do it again i would send the shell off for sand blasting

Rob,

 

I'm kinda the other way round rob, I've had my panels for a month but my mate can't do the welding yet!
Yeah we'll have to have a meet and great at Cday and have a proper chin wag.
Not got any of them brushes, got different ones of the bench polisher, and ones for drill and some for dremmel, where you get them for a angle grinder?

 

If I had my way and the money the shell would have been sent off the be dipped and if I was still at my old job, I would have acid dipped all the other parts, oh well no pain no gain!

 

Halfrauds sell them mate, bout Ł6 on trade i think, they sell two types from what i saw, a cup type and a knotted wire type, the knotted wire ones are really aggressive the cup ones are just right but shot peen you with little sharp bits of wire

They do work well tho,

Rob,

 

Yea, that would be the ultimate, sand blasted and hot zinc dipped, but hey cant have it all lol maybe in the future when i have more space.

Rob,

 

If you have a local body shop supplies near you grab 5 liters of gunwash its only about a fiver and brings it up a treat (its a cheap thinners for washing out spray guns etc) also what i do is sit the tank on the floor then pour thinners over it this then soaks in the grim and softens it

 

i'll give the thinners 2 hours before that coke bottle is a melted mess leaking thinners everywhere!

 

haha I am lucky to have the space. A shot blaster actually rents some space of us in the one end as well and gives me very very cheap rates on blasting so thats what I will do if I ever do buy a MK1 Escort.

 

We also used to do alot of work for a Joseph Ash Galvenising in Hereford and a good mate of mine was the forman and said he would galvenise a shell for me one quite Sunday. Never took him up on it though and now we don't do the galv work.

 

Very good point, just been and put it into a empty metal bottle we had kicking around work, I would have been fucked if it had leaked into my backpack!

 

Well I did it today, was kinda lazy yesterday.
use scotch bright pads and petrol to scrub about 90% of it off and then Toluene** mix with Isopropnole** alcohol came up really well, but I got smack off my tits in the garage on it and I was wear a big filter spraying mask!lol



/\ All that's left here is some surface rust.


Should be able to shot some colour tomorrow, Think its going gloss back as kinda brought gloss black before I completely made my mind up, also thinking about the "strap" to paint red.