53 Chevy gas tank repair or replace
Posted by chefjammy@reddit | projectcar | View on Reddit | 9 comments
I'm working on getting my 53 Chevy business coupe back on the road. Amazingly the car is in incredible shape underneath. The car hasn't moved in about 8-10 years so the gas went to varnish. Pulled the tank to clean it, when I filled it with water it's leaking from the braised on fuel line fitting. It's not from the fitting, but from the plate and it's the tiniest of drops not a huge leak. Trying to weight my options here. I have a new poly tank but not 100% sold on going with it yet. Clean the hell out of the original tank and seal it? Jb weld the seam on the plate and send it? Or actually rebraise the plate. Right now the goal is just to get the car running, I got the engine started but it's just running off a 1/2 gallon jug of gas. It's almost winter here in the north east and the winter plan is to V8 swap with a turbo 350 and the 10 bolt out of my Camaro so there is a longer term plan for it. Just looking for advice on what others have done. The tank only really has some surface rust, amazingly the underside of the car is also rust free. No idea how or why but I'm shocked at how clean it is under. Sorry for rambling haha
Expert_Mad@reddit
New tank. I drove my Caprice with a leaky fuel tank and it’s definitely up there with one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. Nothing caught fire thankfully but you always have that in the back of your mind that it might happen. Not to mention gas will destroy most things if left to drip long enough.
FalseRelease4@reddit
Had a fuel leak one time and discovered that gas absolutely destroys asphalt, just dissolves the tar and leaves behind the sand and gravel, if you see something like that on a parking spot then it wasn't me for sure 😶
Expert_Mad@reddit
Same thing may or may not have happened in our brand new parking lot at work.
FalseRelease4@reddit
How brave are you? Purge it with water or an inert gas and lay some more braze on it 👹
beermaker@reddit
I replaced both saddle tanks on my 68 Scout with poly when I converted to fuel injection... easier to plumb for fuel return lines & the original tanks were a nightmare.
MidDayGamer@reddit
New Poly Tank, I went though this awhile back and came to the conclusion I didn't want to die driving the car with a 50+ year old tank
chefjammy@reddit (OP)
Yeah I've been going back and forth with it. It's a tanks inc. tank but the instructions are pretty awful. I'm just overthinking this I think haha. It has a remote vent that's supposed to be mounted higher than the fuel fill, so I've got to figure where and how to mount that. That's what's been keeping me from just throwing it and running with it. The fuel filler is pretty high up the side fender so I'll have to figure out a way to mount it. I was almost debating running the vent up near the filler and mounting it there. The fuel filler is a 3" pipe and goes up in a larger diameter opening and has plenty of room to run the vent
Jamaican_Dynamite@reddit
New tank.
Ghost17088@reddit
If you have a new tank, I would run that instead of trying to make an old metal tank work, especially one that already has a leak.