I sent the following message to the list last Friday but I don't think
it ever got there. At least it never made it back to me.
-rwd
Last night when I pulled into the driveway I noticed that the garage
door was open. Thinking my wife had forgotten to close it when she had
gotten home, I didn't think too much more about it. But later that
evening my wife suddenly commented, "Oh, by the way there was this
really strong gassy smell in the garage when I got home. I left the
door open so it could air out. You better take a look". Suddenly I got
this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Not again! Reluctantly
I moseyed out to the garage. Sure enough, even with my diminished sense
of smell I was almost overwhelmed. Sigh.
First I checked the floor under the snake from the tank to engine
compartment. Nothing. I tried looking through the spokes of the left
rear wheel at the bottom of the tank where the outlet fitting is
located. Maybe there was a little light being reflected there, but I
couldn't see well enough to tell for sure. I pushed the floor jack
under the frame and jacked up the left side, undid the knock-off and
pulled the wheel. Yup, there was a hint of dampness around my makeshift
fitting gasket, but nowhere near enough to account the strongness of the
odor.
I started nosing around the garage. The two gas containers I'd used to
drain the tank where still sitting next to the car. One was one of
those 5 gallon "GI" types and the other a plastic 2 1/2 gallon container
I'd bought at a hardware specifically for the purpose of tank draining.
The 5 gallon can was empty and well sealed. However, I noticed that the
smaller container, which was about half full, was wet with gasoline from
the capped opening to its bottom. I moved the container and noticed a
puddle underneath. I checked the cap. While it wasn't extremely tight,
it was by no means loose. Apparently the gasoline inside the container
was somehow creeping up the sides, past the cap and down the outside to
the floor. Very interesting. This was, in fact, very similar to what
had occurred to the gas tank when it was leaking. Gasoline leaking out
of a single crack in the bottom had creeped along the bottom and up the
sides. When I first noticed this leak, I thought there were several of
them because most of the bottom and sides were covered with gasoline.
I'm guessing this creeping effect has something to do with surface
characteristics. The exterior of the snake's tank is tinned with a
rather rough coating of solder. The plastic material the gas container
is made of also has a rough texture to it.
So you ME types, what going on here, anyway?
Roland
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