Got out to the garage tonight and was able to get the passenger side fuel tank dropped. I messed around for a few minutes with the fuel lines thinking about draining the tank using the fuel pump, but all of my gas cans were full, so I decided to drop it with the fuel in it.
I drained it once before about a year ago trying to get all the old fuel out because the truck wouldn't run well from that tank, but it turns out it was a bad pump. Fortunately, I only put 7 gallons of fresh fuel in it, so it wasn't too bad to drop.
I will be replacing both of my 16's with 20 gallon tanks and new sending units, so I don't really care what kind of shape these tanks are in. I did however, snap a few pics of the "martian landscape" that had built up inbetween the tank shield and the tank itself. You can see that the shield probably caused more corrosion than it prevented, though I suppose it does stop other more direct impact damage.
It's 100x easier just to unbolt the brackets, in my book. I just lowered the tank down using my jack and a sheet of plywood for support after removing all the bracket bolts. Easy peasy.
