POR-15 Metal Ready Application

I ended up going to bed last night earlier than expected and never got around to draining the tank. I figured that nothing bad could come from leaving the solution in there overnight and nothing did. After I got home from work I drained the tank and flushed it with water many times.

I evacuated the remaining water, about 10 fl ounces, with my favorite turkey baster/clear tubing combo. It left very little water in there. Next I dumped in the metal ready solution, which is alkaline. It will clean the remaining rust and etch the surface of the tank for the POR-15 coating.

A number of south park episodes and tank turns later, I emptied the tank into a bucket so I can filter and reuse the solution for another project. I boiled 4 or 5 large pots full of water and dumped them each into the tank: dump, shake, drain, dump, shake, drain...

My dump station

I finished clearing the solution and used my turkey baster combo to evacuate the remaining 3 fl ounces of water. The tank looks much cleaner now, there was a significant amount of rust removed. I suppose the rest will be coated with the coating I set in there tomorrow.

Before Metal Ready

After Metal Ready.

Currently, I am drying out the tank with a hair dryer and an air mattress pump. I use the hair dryer for about a half hour and then switch off to the air mattress pump and then I switch back. I want to set the coating tonight, but the tank must be absolutely dry. We will see the progress I make in drying the tank out.

Dryer setup