My 04 FL is pretty stock, including the vacuum petcock. After 40k+ miles my reserve point seems to have moved - used to hit it pretty reliably at 162 miles; suddenly jumped to around 190 miles.

I pulled the petcock off and the fuel filter had a bunch of grey paint chips on it - there were also a bunch of the same chips swirling around in the bottom of the jar containing the quart or so of gas that I drained out of the tank.

Using a flashlight to look inside thru the filler I could see some bare metal spots where these chips must've come from.

Anyone else run into this problem? How did you solve it?

Options appear to be:
1. strip it and reseal it using Kreem or Redkote products
2. strip it and leave it bare metal
3. clean out what's in there, put it all back together, and wait for the reserve to go wonky again; then clean out the paint chips again (ie, do nothing).

Any thoughts??

-T

 

This happened to me last summer. Stripped it with aircraft quality paint stripper bought at auto parts store. Then, swirled bb's around inside the tank to clean up the rust. And coated with Kreme. Plan on taking a full day to do this as you will have to rotate your tank(s) about every hour til the coating dries. It's a PITA but well worth it in the long run!

 

I used the Kreem product, followed the instructions dead to the letter. Now the Kreem has peeled loose, it looks like rubber gloves floating inside my tank. I acid etched it, everything according to instructions. Will recommend against anyone using it. Now I have a heckuva mess, how to get that junk out of my tank? only one side is peeling so far. I am scared to mess with it, since it is still in one piece, and can't move around right now.

 

I got a 1965 Honda about 5 years ago. The gas that was in the tank was from 1974. There was all kinds of crap in there. The entire tank was rusting. I used the tank system from POR-15. It wasn't too expensive or hard to do. That stuff is bullet proof. I haven't had any issues since.

That being said. I would proably flush the tank and see if the problem continues. If it does. I would do the POR-15 for sure.
http://www.por15.com/CYCLE-TANK-REPA...ductinfo/CTRK/

Rick