2015 at the Hammond Barn

[Grant Bowker]

The last while at the barn have been a mixture of modern vehicle maintenance (rewiring one of the recovery trailers) and CMP projects.
Bob has continued fine tuning the fit of his door frames in preparation for reskinning them and we have both been cleaning fuel tanks in preparation for applying a lining to them. I had already been offended by a terrible job of soldering in the necks done by the previous owners (POs) so had melted out the old, calmped the neck assembly down onto the tank, heated the support strap to allow it to "relax" into a better fit, tack welded the neck to the tank to replace the original spot welds and resoldered to deal the necks to the tank. Much better. Bob has been commenting/complaining about the many screws involved in the cab 11 tanks and the gorillas who last tightened the drain plugs while I have noticed that once the large cover is off the cab 11/12 tanks, interior access is so much better than cab 13 tanks. While cleaning dust and grit from the 13 tanks, I noticed that it looked like the POs had applied some form of sealer inside the tank that was failing so gallons of a product sold by auto paint dealer as "gun wash" were poured in to soak and strip the coating. At this point it became obvious that the coating had actually done some good in plugging a number of pinholes in the bottom of the tank. The longer the wash was in the tank, the more wet spots became noticeable. Strip the paint from the bottom of the tank, pick and probe at any possible pinhole locations (usually a dark spot or small pit) to identify problems, hammer gently to form a small dimple around the pinholes, shake loose any more flakes in the area and then try solder to seal the pinholes. I was surprised how well the solder worked with only simple plumbing products. Holes to 1/8" were sealed. The tank now has a case of the silver measles. Bob and I did alkaline soaks on 4 tanks to remove fuel residues and other dirt followed by acid to phosphate the interiors. The tanks are now drying to ensure a good base for the sealing coat that is to follow, also to be sure no moisture is trapped between tank and sealer. I was happy to note that the repaired tank didn't leak during the alkalai/acid soaks so I must have done something right. The tank necks didn't leak either so that helped the smiles. I would have been happier if I had been able to make lower profile repairs but that would have needed either much thinner patch solder or deeper dimples.