So my little motorcycle that has been sitting neglected for a few years had its entire gas tank evaporate - no signs of rust in the tank or anything (plenty of rust on its screws, and the paint needs to be touched up), just looks like the gasket around the fuel cap disintegrated and maybe one of the lines has cracked a bit. So do I just replace all the lines and flush it with fuel cleaner? or how do you recover an engine from "total evaporation and everything is probably just gum now"
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@jonny@neuromatch.social i'd run some seafoam through the tank and lines, it's kerosene and will do great at cleaning the bulk of it out.
sounds like you got lucky! usually the damage is worse..
sounds like you got lucky! usually the damage is worse..
@purple
It hasn't been that long and this little machine isn't complex enough to really have deep problems, just a little four stroke with no computer, not even fuel Injected. There were some spiders in the seat but that's the worst of it
@jonny@neuromatch.social i always reckon it's the fuel doing the damage and not the machine being weak. seals dont last forever :(
so far in my experience efi stuff tends to survive it better because carb bowls are usually plastic and needle jets tend to be real hard to unclog.
so far in my experience efi stuff tends to survive it better because carb bowls are usually plastic and needle jets tend to be real hard to unclog.
@purple
Ah ya ya, the fuel has definitely destroyed at least two seals, one coupler, and all the fuel lines, but all those are easy to replace. This carb is all steel at least, and the jets survived as far I can tell (though the proof will be in the starting)
@jonny if it's a carb you might have to take it apart and clean it, possibly replace some gaskets, blow out the jets, etc. if you're replacing lines anyway, consider switching to tygon instead of the regular stuff. much more stable and longer lasting.
if i'm leaving anything undriven/unridden for more than a few weeks i try to get pure gas if possible and definitely add stabilizer. beyond a couple of months ethanol gas starts to go bad, absorbs lots of moisture, corrodes carb parts, etc
@dank
I'm basically in maintenance mode trying to sell this thing, so I think I'll flush it and leave it empty. Carb looks clean, thankfully.
@jonny in my experience seafoam is the liquid you want it鈥檚 really good at removing varnishes in my experience. I would clean the tank and then replace the lines and filters.
@rye
Seems like that's the move. The previous owner of this bike had put little inline filters in and everyone else has said that's a bad idea, so I guess its time to swap everything in the fuel system. I previously replaced the carb and that's looking pretty clean. One more system in the bike of Theseus, I think ive touched everything except accessory electrical at this point, the headlight and taillight are total mysteries, and the turn signals don't even have a switch
@jonny wishing you the best with the project. Looking forward to hearing how it goes.
@rye
The ideal end goal is to just sell this machine lol, it makes absolutely no sense to have a 50 year old Japanese import bike that tops out at 45mph in LA, its just rusting in my alley as I passively refuse to use facebook marketplace to sell it and wait for a buyer to magically appear
also i couldn't get to it today because i had to teach one of my neighbors to solder, so i guess the safest way to store fresh gas is "don't" and "put it in your car" because oh boy even from having the gas can in the living room for a few hours during monsterdong is smelling up a storm
it turns out clear gas doesn't exist in LA? weird. in Oregon it was just at a gas station that was 15 minutes away instead of 3 minutes. idk really the effects of that, i was just always told only use clear gas for vintage bikes, so we'll see if we can get her running again
@jonny@neuromatch.social What's clear gas? Is that like the gasoline equivalent of Crystal Pepsi?
@cholling
Gas without ethanol :)
