Back in the day, we used to lower a length of chain down into a tank and then rattle the tank around letting the chain knock anything that was loose or scaly inside the tank away from the metal. Then rinse and dump a few times.
Eastwood makes a gas tank recondition kit, basically you do the same as above but then put their sealer on the inside of the tank swishing it around to seal all inside surfaces.
I've done the chain thing before on my old Massey Harris tractors. . .worked really well. . .LOTS of work, but it worked well.
This tank doesn't appear to have rust or scale in it. . .I was more worried about any residual bad gas or residue from the old gas leaching into the new gas I would put into the tank.
Depending on the filler neck design, you could use a pressure washer or take it to a coin-op car wash & wash it out. Between the filler and sender ports, you can reach most of the inside. Use the soapy setting, swish it out, then rinse it. Do it for several cycles.
Then either set it in the sun to bake out the residual moisture, or hook a shop vac up (using the hose on the exhaust side) to the filler to blow it out.
I did this process with my stainless tank & after a few hours of airing out with the vac, there was no fuel smell. It needed welding, and this worked well.
I cleaned up an old hd sportster gas tank that had all kinds of crud in it by dumping in a couple thousand BB's and shook the heck out of it. It looked new inside when I was done. I also rinsed it several times in between with parts cleaner to clean the inside of tank and clean up the BB's. Did it probably 4 or 5 times.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
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Fuel tank cleaning???
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