<VV> Re: Exploding tanks

[Tony Underwood]

At 06:04 hours 09/26/2004 -0500, J R Read_HML wrote:
>I seem to recall reading that the Corvair tank was changed after (during?) 
>the '60 model year run.  

Must be an "early" early '60.   There have been three (still two) in the
fleet and they all had rubber couplers in the filler necks.   I'll have to
dig out the SAE Papers stuff when I get off work (wasting the bosses time
playing on e-mail) and check the tank stuff.    


>The EARLY Earlies had a filler neck (metal) 
>integral with the tank.  It was redesigned with the rubber "coupler" so that 
>the filler neck would pull loose rather than the tank rupture (in a 
>collision) which occurred with the metal neck.  

I'd suspect that there'd be more reason too use the coupler for handling,
storage, and installation rather than for integrity of the tank/filler
junction.   You have to smack something pretty hard to get the impacting
object anywhere close to the fuel tank.   I've seen some pretty ambitious
wrecks involving Vairs (local vendor bought wrecks left and right on a
weekly basis) and one of these (66 Monza) ended up in my clutches for
parting.   It had been totaled out and I was told it had killed the driver,
kinda creepy looking at the "inside-out" collapsed steering wheel with
broken horn ring arms, likely sheared off as the column impacted the
drivers chest.    The car had hit a bridge abutment at speed.   It crushed
the front of the car and wadded up the frame member where the steer gear
was mounted (adding insult to injury, no pun,  to the collapsed steering
wheel) and distorted the car enough to jam the doors but in spite of the
massive damage to the front end, the tank remained undamaged and in fact it
was removed and used for something else.   The crossmember was twisted and
kinked but it didn't bend enough to touch the tank.    There wasn't a lot
to remove from the car outside the rear suspension and fenders, which I
removed and still have in the shed.   The vendor kept the driveline, the
rest was sold cheap.   

That one was the hardest nose-hit Corvair I ever dismembered and the tank
was still intact and undamaged.   Even the filler spout was solid, rear
section of the driver side fender at the gas cap door had remained
uncrushed although bent, still allowed the tank to come out fairly easily.   


>Anyone else that can verify 
>this?  Perhaps I'm confusing some other car, but I'm pretty sure it was 
>Corvair which had this problem.

I'll dig around...  but the Pinto tank was suspected of having the filler
spout come off the tank should the rear of the car be crushed in a hard
impact, "cured" by adding a new "collapsible" filler spout with a rubber
grommet around it and an extra length of tube which extended into the tank.
  In short, it "plugged in" via that rubber grommet...  should the tank be
displaced, the extra length of tube would pull partially out of the tank
but not separate from the tank.    This, in conjunction with a plastic
guard between the tank and the back cover of the differential constituted
the "fix" for the Pinto fire issues.    Been there done that, got a close
look at the one I was driving at the time which got the "safety" mods via
Magic City Ford in Roanoke VA.    That particular Pinto was a decent little
car, ran well,  had alloy wheels and an exhaust header... cheaper than the
cast iron exhaust manifold that cracked at the flange when somebody (not
me) mis-set the lift to pick the car up to change the oil, caught the
exhaust pipe and kinked it up and cracked the exhaust manifold.  

I like Pintos and would have no problems driving one today.   I'd
especially like to have one of those "porthole" sedan-delivery wagons.
No fears over that tank issue either... it just wasn't that much off a
problem.    Media got hold of it and made a huge issue out of it.   I
recall seeing a statistic that said you were more likely to be killed by a
heart attack  in a Pinto than get burned in a crash.   Out of almost
2,000,000 Pintos, there were ~60 deaths from fires in crashes.   

I wonder what the Gurus will do with the current issues involving deaths by
fire in other cars...   the Crown Vic and Grand Marquis have burned up
almost three times as many people as the Pinto from rear enders and flaming
gas tanks and there are nowhere NEAR  two million of these cars on the
roads.   Likewise the early Mustang with the infamous "drop-in" tanks in
the trunk which splashed gasoline into the back of the back seat in a
rear-ender and turned the car into a fireball if it lit.    No recall on
either those Mustangs or the CVic/GMarq...  I guess it's not as newsworthy
seeing as how these cars weren't the big end-all/save-all utility car the
Pinto was touted to be.   

I still maintain that the Pinto got a bad shake in all of this, what with
rigged crash test footage (and yes it was rigged) and a bevy of DOT and
consumer safety activists all out to make a name for themselves by taking
down a "Big Boy", not unlike the Corvair issues which also turned out to be
a bit off-base.   


tony..