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I will be cleaning out my motorcycle tank using electrolysis. First, I have to remove all the gas from the tank, and then do the cleaning and then remove all the water that's left over, but I have a problem:

The tank has a collar all the way around the inside of the top opening. This collar prevents the gas from draining completely when I turn it over. I can't seem to get much out of the opening for the petcock either. How can I get all the fluid from my tank. There's not enough gas left in the tank to allow for siphoning. I was thinking along the lines of a turkey baster, but I can't find one long enough.

How can get all the fluid out of my tank so that it's dry? It's a 2005 Honda Shadow.

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  • Could you award an answer for the question?
    – DucatiKiller
    Apr 17, 2015 at 17:08
  • @DucatiKiller, nothing really worked. I'll post what I did, but it didn't work super well either.
    – Edwin
    Apr 17, 2015 at 18:25

4 Answers 4

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You could absorb it with a rag. Either put continue to hold the tank upside down and stick a rag in the collar around the opening or hold onto a corner and lower the rag into the tank.

Leave the cap off and whatever residue that is left after you pull out the rag should evaporate quickly.

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You could also heat the tank lightly, without open flame (hair dryer maybe). This would cause the gas left inside to evaporate, then could be forced out using a compressor hose. You'd need to be careful not to heat it to high so as to cause combustion. Also, do this in a well ventilated area so as to not inhale the fumes.

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  • When you say "forced out using a compressor hose", you mean blowing outside air into the tank to displace the gas vapors? How would you tell when all the vapor is gone?
    – jscs
    Dec 31, 2013 at 20:30
  • Yes, just displace the gas vapors. Common sense will tell you when it's gone. It won't take much heat to get the fuel to vaporize, nor much air to get all of the vapors out. You can sniff the displaced air enough to tell if you've removed all of the vapors, just don't breath in too much. You don't want to get high and kill brain cells.
    – Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 ♦
    Dec 31, 2013 at 21:25
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I also have this problem with the collar stopping for total drain of inside fluid. To use cloth and a manual drain pump or the tool used to fill dampers is good, but patience and and to be thorough is important. Still its worth the work when you're finished :)

enter image description here

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  • Note: Your link to a shortened Google images link actually redirects to a commercial shopping page (possibly due to copyright issues). As such, the link/your post could be considered spam. Your intent was probably just to link to an image of what you were talking about. You might want to adjust the link that you are using so that it just shows an image.
    – Makyen
    Feb 6, 2018 at 20:26
  • @Makyen that's done now :)
    – JAD
    Feb 7, 2018 at 11:03
  • @JAD Just copying the image into the post is inappropriate. A) without any attribution, it's plagiarism. B) Doing so publishes the image under the CC By-SA 3.0 license, which it's unlikely you have the right to do. Doing so would only be permitted if you were the copyright holder, or if the image was already published under a compatible license (very unlikely).
    – Makyen
    Feb 7, 2018 at 12:01
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I didn't find a solution that is acceptable to me, but I came close. What I ended up doing is to suck the water out of the tank with a shop vac. I filled the tank and emptied with the shopvac several times to help get the sediment out. This still left about 1/2 cup of water in the tank. I couldn't get a vacuum attachment appropriately shaped to get the rest of the water out, so I got a hand-operated siphon pump to get as much water out as I could from the fill hole.

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