Sealing & painting plastic tanks

[Davey Crocket]

My mate at PPG said dont paint it....it's never going to last and will scratch too easily which in reality we know is the case...where just kidding ourselves. If it was me I would just get a big perforated decal made the same color as the tank with whatever graphics are supose to be on it and leave it at that.

[montynut]

I have used both the POR15 and KBS products on fibreglass tank and had one failure out of 4. That failure was not the products fault as the tank had previous attempts at sealing by previous owners.

Both products work well on fibreglass but preparation is critical.

[matcho mick]

Minor thread deviation::At Nepean one day Matcho Mick mentioned that one of the commercialy available tank treatments worked better on used fibreglass tanks than on virgin new ones. Which treatment was that Mick?
[/quote]

i've used POR15 pretty successfully on a lot of older tanks,older the better,i've found new glass tanks are not "conditioned" enough,requiring several attempts to completely seal,POR15 requires a very labourious process to get it spoton,essentially the initial degreasing is critical,especially the two stroke oil mix residues,follow the instructions supplied,i tend to retard the final curing by not exposing the tank to air,spend a minimum of 2hrs constantly positioning/ rotating the tank, best tip is don't just dump all the contents in,too much sealant pooled in one spot tends to delaminate,even crack after the curing process,then your'e in deep doo doo,

[crash n bern]

You could try hitting the tank with a heat gun.  It would melt the plastic and seal up the cracks.  Just try a small area first and see how you go. I've used a heat gun on chalky plastic and had it go shiny.  Sand blasting works good on chalky plastic as well.  Save hours of scraping with a Stanley blade.