Kawasaki Triples Club

An hour ago Harv decided to get the bag of shite out of the garage and kick it up - 3 kicks and off it went. He looked down and shouted Al this don't look good.







It looks like the tank has gone on the seam so we are after a H2 tank and as the paint cannot be repeated we are going for the boring Blue H2 this time

shite happens, too bad

Is this the another example of the rot caused by ethanol in petrol. A friend has just had the same with his gpz tank.
Steve r

Not really .
The new Fuel & ethanol attacks rubber parts. It doesn`t rot metal.

It`s 40 year old tanks that were originally made with thin metal and poor welds rusting through with pinpricks holes.
Possibly partially contributed to by old US fuel going hydroscopic , then drying out leaving a damp residue that turns to rust.

Most of the gungy inside tanks from Bikes that have sat for years look ok on the paint side, but blow holes all along the left seam near the back when blasted clean. Thats where the damp settles when a bike is parked on it`s sidestand for years and years.

This one looks like it`s pinpricked around the tank mounting lug ?? It only needs a tiny hole. And that may have nearly been there from the Factory from new, .................cue heated debate ?!!

Ethanol does attract water, and the water is heavier than gas, so it sinks to the bottom. And I don't know about in England, but here in the states, the tanks at gas stations always have water in them, so some water gets in the gas from there. It's so bad here (supposedly only 10% ethanol, but I know it's more) even bikes 3 or 4 years old are having rusting through problems.

Yes.......
I tend to not go for long winded explanations , then regret it when Folk go off at a tangent , or don't pick up on the salient point first time .
J- M. , UK petrol has currently 5% or less ethanol , and it's only been added in the last few years. The question Steve was posing , as I interpreted it. Of course , was. On a current and immediate worry ? nobody these days will knowingly leave a bike with fuel in it when storing a tank. for one thing the accursed fuel goes off over winter anyway!!

but then , the main part of the text was on the original topic of how the B.o' S. tank got it's leak . So yep , could have been ethanol fuel absorbing water and rusting. but , and again I made a jump in assumption here , I suspect it had been unused for years before ethanol had raised it's ugly head !!

Matters not a jot , of course. It's only us old codgers. Finding obscure things to witter on about in our dotage. We should probably go save the planet instead.
A good start to that would be to try and stop this "green" Fuel nonsense !!! I can't see how getting Farmers to grow. Corn. Using all that energy and fertilisers , to then distil it into Ethanol , using more energy , then sell it. As a green fuel , can leave a smaller carbon footprint. Than just burning the damned oil in the first place ?!!!

Neil the Don wrote: A good start to that would be to try and stop this "green" Fuel nonsense !!! I can't see how getting Farmers to grow. Corn. Using all that energy and fertilisers , to then distil it into Ethanol , using more energy , then sell it. As a green fuel , can leave a smaller carbon footprint. Than just burning the damned oil in the first place ?!!!

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Don't worry that will soon be a thing of the past now that the U.S. farmers have had their "corn subsidiaries" Cut out

Corn subsiduaries Rick ?
What`s that then ,.....An OFFSHOOT of BP America ??

Neil the Don wrote:Corn subsiduaries Rick ?
What`s that then ,.....An OFFSHOOT of BP America ??

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For YEARS the Yanks grew the majority of the worlds Soya, Then a few Years ago when the "petrol crisis" hit, they were given incentives to drop the Soya and grow corn instead for the "new Bio Fuel / Ethanol vehicles" As a result, the price of Soya escalated dramatically So now the fuss is all over with, the cash has been withdrawn and I have little or no doubt that the discounted / cheap "E38" Corn fuel that you buy at the pumps in the U.S. will be the same or higher than regular petrol . . . fuckwits!

I could almost see the cogs going round till the penny dropped Rick.

(. FYI Ray , Rick accidentally used the word subsidiaries instead of subsidies. )

but more importantly , US Govt. paying out monies to interfere with the Free Market Capitalist Economic markets ??!!!

Yeah gods, that darn near reeks of communism. Telling Farmers what they should grow and dictating the price they will earn.!!!

They'll be printing money next , and defaulting on their debts by going back on the Gold Standard ,........oh hang on

So going back to "sweet angels" original problem. Did you follow Rick's advice and has that rather nice paint job been rescued?
Another silly question, why a "bag of shite". Are you having problems with the bike?
Steve r

In answer to Steve Rowden - nope, the tank is still bubbled so no change so far. As for the 'bag of shite' when we first had it (before we rebuilt it) I said why have we bought this 'bag of shite', and the name just stuck, the bike itself has always run fine and had no problems up till now.

So it was "fall into a bag of shite which came up smelling of roses"
I'd guess that you cant match the colour. Shame, cos the bike looks fab in the photo on the introduce yourselves link.
Best of Luck.
steve r

We have now got a H2 tank and are having the paint set done blue

Will do Here's one for the memory books

Alison, you keep calling it a bag of shit and if I was the bike I would kick you in the oops. If that's a bag of shit then I will take a dozen, for once be kind to it will you Please

Eric, the bike was named the bag of shite when we first bought it cos I said why have we bought this bag of shite, the name just stuck, believe me, even though we still call her by that name she is far from it

Sad you're going back to blue though. Some non-standard paint jobs look really good and yours really looked the bogs.

I know, the more I look at it and the photo's the more I feel the same way, I have a plan