Water in Gas

In thinking of the shared subject of water in Model A gas tanks, just had to add a descriptive saying I almost forgot until last week.

With all of our local residential flooding last week, our leaders announced today in our local paper that our last week's rain storm dumped a whopping 17 inches of rain in just 17 hours.

The first night last week, with constant lightning & earth shaking thunder, from 1 a.m. until 6 a.m., I stayed up & watched it pour & pour in sheets for 5 hours without stopping.

Thought about Mike V.'s reply #22, where we always hear about the large cow & the flat rock; but, in a few minutes, when we looked out, & could no longer see the grass our entire yard with our new lake, somehow it reminded me of my grandfather's vintage saying.

Being born in 1867, & owning race horses, my father said he always described heavy rain with a different twist ...... like:

"It is raining like a racehorse peeing in a boot."

Just nothing like being able to truly portray exact weather conditions.
 
After seeing that gas station under water on the noon news, in Nebraska from the torrential rains they got Tuesday, got me to thinking about this. Gotta be careful, but sometimes you just don't know what you are pumping into your tank.

At least a Model A is easy to drain out. Still a nuisance. I'm like Tom, top that tank off for long term storage. Lucky enough around here to still have a couple of gas stations with actual gasoline, not the ethanol junk.
 
I used to work at the local airport in my hometown pumping fuel for all the general aviation airplanes and business jets that came in. Its incredible how many quality control measures that are present in aviation fuel. Whenever fuel was delivered to our fuel farm first we drained the fuel farm holding tanks sump, then the tanker sump was drained and the fuel was filtered from the truck into our holding tanks. Every time we fueled one of our trucks from our fuel farm we drained the sump at the farm before hooking up the truck and the fuel was filtered before it was pumped into the truck. After all of this we drained the sump on our trucks DAILY - The truck also filtered the fuel being pumped into the aircraft. Airplanes also have a fuel sump that is drained as part of a normal preflight action. When dealing with 15,000gallon holding tanks you would find some particulate and moisture in the sump but by the time it got into the truck, and with daily measures taken that fuel was CLEAN. There were other periodic checks evaluating filters for efficiency and bacteria.

Now get this.... NONE of those measures are present in automotive gasoline or at least to my knowledge not required by law. It really gave me perspective in the kind of crap that we pump into our cars. :eek: My first flight instructor also agreed since he had worked at an automotive gas station and he said their tanker hookups were at ground level and whenever it was opened up they could get gravel and all kinds of crap falling in if you were careless.

Of course if you get bad fuel in your car you pull to the side of the road and call/pay some people or work on the problem yourself and eventually go on your way again. With airplanes contaminated fuel issues would be much more complicated.
 
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A chamois will filter water from gas. Also I have noticed on my Model A that when filling the gas tank during a rain that water has a tendency to run down the sun visor right into the filler opening along with the gas from the pump nozzle. Is that a design defect that may be covered by an extended warranty?

Chet
 
Growley bear said:
A chamois will filter water from gas. Also I have noticed on my Model A that when filling the gas tank during a rain that water has a tendency to run down the sun visor right into the filler opening along with the gas from the pump nozzle. Is that a design defect that may be covered by an extended warranty?

Chet
Click to expand...

Only if you buy the optional sun visor rain gutter.:D:p
 
Too bad you don't live in Canada. We would just leave it out on a sub zero night, let the water rise to the top and freeze. In the morning we reach in, pull out the ice cubes and the problem is solved ! Pretty simple, eh !
Wayne
 
Tom,thanks for the humor, except for the Olds water leak. A great way to start the Model A day.

Chet
 
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