Gas Tank Plastic weld repair
- rick3955
- Jul 22, 2021
- 2 min read
Unfortunately thieves drilled a hole in this mans gas tank. I was able to plastic weld his tank and get him back on the road.
High-density polyethylene (HDPE) has been the resin of choice for plastic gas tanks, and production capacity has been on the increase. Kautex of Canada built a new plant in Avilla, Indiana, to meet anticipated increases in demand for plastic automotive fuel tanks. Production was scheduled for 400,000 tanks in 1994 and eventually will be boosted to between 600,000 and 700,000 units per year.7 These plastic tanks are currently being used on Chrysler's Jeep Cherokee and T300 trucks.
Belgium-based Solvay is the exclusive supplier of plastic fuel tanks to General Motors' Saturn Division. Solvay has also expanded their Canadian subsidiary in Blenheim, Ontario, and installed two new blow-molding machines to make HDPE tanks for the Chrysler's LH series and Viper sports car. Chrysler expects to sell 300,000 LH vehicles, all with HDPE tanks that offer more volume capacity than steel tanks. Monolayer-HDPE tanks offer long-term structural integrity but will not meet future permeation requirements. Chrysler started to switch in 1995 to multilayered HDPE to meet the more stringent SHED test.
The emergence of new technologies has enabled the increase of plastic gas tanks. These new technologies can be grouped into either multilayer or barrier types.
Some manufacturers see multilayer tank technology as the answer to stricter emission standards. Ford uses six-layer fuel tanks made of HDPE and, at one point, considered a $110 million investment in machinery and equipment to produce the tanks (which would have been the first commercial use of coextruded tanks). However, Ford decided to increase steel-tank stamping capacity at Dearborn; the Explorer and the new F-150 truck (PN96) gas tanks have been switched back from plastic to zinc-nickel coated steel.8
Kautex is supplying Ford's facility in Milan, Michigan, with this six-layer technology. The tanks are designed to meet California's stricter evaporative fuel standards and consist of an inner layer of HDPE joined by an adhesive layer and barrier layer of polyamide or ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer. An additional adhesive layer is joined by a layer of "regrind" and an outer layer of HDPE.
Walbro Automotive Corporation began commercial production of multilayer plastic fuel tanks for 1995 models. Annual production of these multilayer tanks is expected to reach 500,000 units by 1998. Their tank uses a barrier layer of ethylene-vinyl alcohol (EVOH) that is sandwiched between two layers of HDPE.
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