From: MVTrucker@aol.com
Date: Mon Sep 29 2003 - 06:10:04 PDT
My first experience with using heat and flame on a fuel
tank was very interesting. Back when I was eighteen (a
long time ago)we had a 500 gallon fuel tank off of an old
heating fuel delivery truck, probably from the early 1930's.
It was a single compartment tank with a pipe and valve set
up for gravity filling buckets. Back in it's time, pumps
hoses and nozzles were not common and delivery of fuel
was done by pouring the fuel from a bucket into the home
heating oil tank. A brass counter was mounted on the rear of
the tank so the deliveryman could keep track of how much
product he delivered to a tank. Well, my dad decided that he
no longer needed this truck tank, so he told me to cut it up.
Being young, dumb and brave, I set to work with the cutting
torch, starting with cutting off the gravity pipe. Residual
fuel in the pipe was filling the tank with an explosive gas
and when the air-gas mix hit the right proportion, KA-BAMB!
Dome lid blew off, hit the garage and the tank looked like
a pregnant pumpkin!
Two reproduction gas tanks that I bought new leaked at the
seams when after I installed them (an MB and a M38A1) and
filled them with gas. I removed and drained the tanks,
rinsed them out with water, rhen filled them with water to
eliminate fumes, emptied them and MIG welded the seams. Used
DryGas to remove the water residue.
Joe Young
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat May 07 2005 - 20:24:28 PDT