What is this substance from my fuel tank

[pres589]

I took the bike on it's first real highway trip, about 45 miles to a town near me to see my grandfather and show him the GS (since he's been really curious about it since I first mentioned it).  On the way home it started to miss out at 70 MPH and eventually died.  The bike would crank, would not start.  It was dead of night and a fellow rider (Harley guy) in a pickup gave me a ride home with the bike because he's cool like that I guess, I got really lucky there. 

The point is, since the bike seems to have been running lean since I got it, and I've got a K&N Lunchbox and new jets sitting here, I decided to pull the tank, drain it and look for rust/crap in the fuel, and then go on to pulling the carbs apart and cleaning/rejetting them.  The tank doesn't seem to be rusty at all, but I'm wondering about the color of the fuel and some fluid that is also in there with the gas.  Check out these two pictures of the fuel I've so far drained out of the tank through the tank petcock;



Is that color ok?  So far I've added about 2.5 gallons of fuel to the bike since I got it, and I get the feeling that the fuel that came with the bike wasn't that fresh.  Something really odd is this;



The bottle, by the way, is a 1.75 liter of Bicardi that I had here waiting to go out with the trash.  I shook it out before filling it with fuel, but I'm sure there's a little alcohol left in there.  Is that stuff Bicardi, or something I need to worry about?  When I get the tank empty I'll aim a flashlight in the filler and see what I can see.

edit: in the time it took to take the pictures, post this, and get back to the tank, gasoline ate the paint up on the tank around the filler and down a side.  Piss.  Guess I've got another project waiting for me on this thing... what's it cost to get a tank painted?

[hmmmnz]

hmm thats a bit dodgy, mabee sugar some one not like you???
can't say for sure.
you should have drained the tank from the bottom, not to worry, live and learn aye
so how does the bike run now that you have the new jets ect, i hope you cleaned out those dirty carbs
good luck

[pres589]

No idea, I just started this process.  And by the looks of what the fuel did to a vodka bottle (I'm now out of containers and anything is game) that's what happens to alcohol in gasoline.  The insides of the tank look clean and there's been just a little bit of crud out of the thing, so I don't think this is my problem.  I guess while it's off I can call around tomorrow and see who in the area does media blasting and painting.  Wondering what this is going to cost me.

[Codger]

If it is liquid, it is probably just water with water soluble contaminants.
Comes from occasionally bad fuel at the station.  Possibly condensation in the tank.

If you don't pull off of reserve from time to time,  condensation will accumulate.

Everytime I fill up, I switch to reserve for a couple of minutes when I hit the highway.  It will pull of the moisture droplets before it accumulates enough that it can't be passed.  If you get a bad load of gas, it gives you a chance to switch back to main for the floating fuel until you can drain off the sump.

[GeeP]

Water, probably from condensation.  Keeping your tank full all the time and storing the bike inside will prevent the problem from cropping up again.

Rinse out your tank with a couple bottles of isopropyl alcohol from the drugstore before re-filling.  The alcohol will combine with the water and flush it out.   

[ducati_nolan]

Yeah, that's definately water maybee with some other garbage in it. When you put your tank back on your bike be sure to drain your carbs as the water will collect in there. If your bike still dies or runs bad after that, there is probally still a little bit of water in there, if you fill up with Arco (10% alcoholl) it should allow the water to mix with the fuel so you can burn it off, also Heet or other gas line antifreeze is just alcohol and will allow the water to mix with the fuel. The alcohol can eat the rubber pieces though, so I would recomend using only as much as required, then going for a long ride to burn off that tank of gas and then top of with some good gas like chevron, 76 etc, basically anything but arco. Good luck

[pres589]

The next bottle that I'm holding up, after I disposed of the fuel in the first one, lacked that weird white fluid at the bottom of the bottle.  After that I got an emptied vodka bottle and filled it with fuel, and the white fluid at the bottom came back.

The lesson here is, if you're using alcohol bottles to fill up with gasoline, and you don't have them completely 100% cleaned out, there's going to be water/alcohol at the bottom of the bottle and it'll look like that.  The tank is, as we speak, being repainted by a guy that does a lot of motorcycle work and he thought the tank itself looked pretty clean as did I.  So, with a new inline filter, and carbs that I've been going through by hand (nearly finished) the only possible spot for crap to come through now is anything left in the petcock and the lines that I'm reusing which seem to be in great shape.  Will keep an eye on that filter to see what happens, if I see anything in the thing I'll pull the lines and petcock.