This bike belongs to a friend of mine that lives around the corner from me. Bike was parked after she had a mishap with it. Unsure of herself, she let it sit. She would go out to the garage and start the bike and run it for a bit pretty regularly. Then it wouldn't start, and so it sat. I offered to help resurrect it. As expected, the battery had left the chat. I got a new battery for it and it turns over just fine, but just won't fire off. Pulled a spark plug wire and let it arc across some metal on the frame while attempting to start. I held it in the wrong spot and promptly shocked the shit out of myself. Yep, it's got spark for damn sure. Well, let me check the petcock to make sure it's flowing gas. I was working in a dimly lit garage and did not know much about this bike. Turns out, there is no petcock, there is no carburetor. It's a 2007 which was the first year of fuel injection for the Harley Sportster. Well, that makes sense, there is no fuel pump running when the key is on. I pull the fuel tank off and take it back to the house to pull and replace the fuel pump.
I pulled out the fuel pump from the bottom of the tank and was greeted by a sea of orange. The tank was eaten up by rust. This tank has a flat plate just below the filler neck on the top of the tank which doesn't allow you to see in through the top of the tank. The only view into the tank is from the fuel pump mounting plate hole on the bottom of the tank. It looked bad from there.
This bike was purchased from a Harley dealership as a used trade in. Apparently it came to Florida by way of Alaska. It had 8600 miles on the clock at this point. It sat idle for a lot of it's life. Sitting with a partial tank of gas allows some air and some moisture to accumulate on the upper part of the tank not submerged in fuel. The top part of the tank began rusting and those rust particles sank down in the tank and likely caused the demise of the fuel pump.
I assumed the tank was not salvageable, but I'll try. I bought a gallon of Evapo-rust and poured it in the tank. I rotated the tank every 24 hours to a different position while resting on a 5 gallon bucket, for a week. There was a ton of debris that came out of the tank that I rinsed out several times. Peering into the tank from the one hole on the bottom it looked fantastic! Could not believe how well it cleaned it up. Once I was not rinsing out any more particles or dust, I sloshed some alcohol around in there to get the water out. The tank looked good. I ordered a new fuel pump and filter and put it back together.
I took the tank back around the corner and got it installed on the bike, got everything hooked back up and tried the key. Fuel pump spins to life, and I hit the start button and it fires IMMEDIATELY. 1200cc V-twin roars to life through open pipes in a small enclosed garage. Cacophony is a good word.
It's back to the world of the living, so it's time to let it see the light of day for the first time in many years. We worked it out of the man door of the garage and was able to ride it around the corner to my house. It was dusty and dingy and needed some tlc. I gave it a bath and set about polishing the prodigious amount of chrome. It shined up real purdy! From what I now know, this bike has aftermarket intake, open exhaust and a Power commander piggy back ecu controller. Possibly aftermarket cams. Took it out for a test ride and holy snot buckets! This thing freakin' rips!
Before cleaning:
