I have taken to a metal stripper company to soak/rinse in an acid solution - come back looking great. I have avoided tanks needing repair, but know my local readiator shop does repairs on as tanks. Then have used the Red-Kote and happy with results. FYI, we can not get RedKote locally in Denver but I was able to puchase recently off ebay. I have also used the EvapoRust and it works very well - use the stuff often. In my case, the metal stripping company pricing was about the same as a gallon of EvapoRust so saved the time plus get the ouside stripped of all paint as well.