Well now I did it. The bolt that holds the gas tank in place is stripped and just spins in the tank, leaving me no way to remove my gas tank… I gotta believe someone’s ran into this issue before. What do I do here?? Thanks for any help
Usually rotating while pulling does the trick. I guess it depends on your setup though.
I was able to get a wrench on the embedded nut that was spinning in the tank, just enough to get the bolt to crack loose. Barring that, cut or grind the bolt head off.
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Happened to me recently, I had to saw the tank off around the screw and rip it off, so that only the screw and a small piece of plastic were left. Once you have a bit of the plastic sawed off, you can use a flathead screwdriver and a rubber hammer to remove more of the tank
just ran into it 1 week ago, i sawed off the little plastic triangle screw and removed the tank. i havent got the time to remove it somehow yet… (the bolt inside the tank)
Yeah i dont care about saving the tank… for what it’s worth, I have a compkart with the fun birel curved gas tank tubes so sawing the tank off will be fun i’d imagine. I like @KartingIsLife suggestion though of rotating and pulling once i get the chassis apart. I guess we will find out.
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This technique James suggested can work in addition to pressing on the pressed in nut with a flat blade.
Short of that unfortunately it’s Dremel or sawzal time.
I’ll never understand how this works, but the impact on the low setting was able to break the bolt loose so i could back it out without damaging a thing!
Is it still new tank time, or can i jb weld this nut in place or something and save the tank.
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It ain’t weird if it works.
JB weld works, but then you’ll always look at it and wish you’d replaced it!
Depends on your budget. Most kart tanks are (in a karting context) not that expensive.
My only other hesitancy with JB Weld on a fuel tank is I think I did that once for a tank leak (drill bit or a rock punctured the tank), and I recall it didn’t keep it “water tight.” Entirely likely that was more a ME issue than a fault of the JB weld though.
I’m just trying to hold the nut in place with the JB weld. The tank’s basically brand new (half a season old) which is why I’m trying to save it rather than just replace it.
Take a look at heat set inserts. Common in 3D printed parts when you need metal threads. You don’t need a special soldering iron tip. Just run a bolt into it, heat it up with a torch and insert.
Or if the existing insert isn’t too mangled you can try installing a helicoil.
Take a look at heat set inserts. Common in 3D printed parts when you need metal threads. You don’t need a special soldering iron tip. Just run a bolt into it, heat it up with a torch and insert. Or if the existing insert isn’t too mangled you can try installing a helicoil.
A helicoil into plastic? I think the issue is that the plastic around the threaded insert is so mangled it spins, rather than the threads being trashed.
Missed that part. Yea then best bet if you wanna save the tank is epoxy in the exsisting insert or heat set a new one.
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This happened on our rental 206’s with depressing regularity likely due to whatever jungle juice they put in pump gas not getting along with the plastic the fuel tank is molded from. Our solution was far more fun. Whack the bastard with a dead blow hammer out the side of the kart. The plastic will stretch/give around the captive nut. Then take your finest pair of vice grips to the now exposed fastener and spin it off.
Replace with a new tank and pretend nothing ever happened.
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