Reply To: Pressure rating for OMC 1950’s tanks

[Biddaddydan]

Dear George,

One more reply that doesn’t really answer your question but I still wanted to submit my experience and thoughts about the pressurized fuel tanks.

I’m 72 years old so as a youngster living on a river next to a marina that was heavily visited by weekend boaters, I directly witnessed a lot of incidents involving pressurized tanks. Those that I didn’t directly witness, I could look at the remains of the boat as they were almost all towed/brought back to the marina by the Fire Department for the insurers to assess and some time, unfortunately to allow for Coroners’ inquests.

Indeed many of those incidents were explosions BUT none were from the fuel tank rupturing. It invariably resulted from gasoline vapours escaping the tank upon fill-up or slow-leaking  from the cap and/or fuel lines connections while in use. In those days, almost everyone was cigarette smoking which only compounded the risk of fire onboard.

We had a double-line fuel tank 25 hp Evinrude at that time and my dad was adamant about safety procedure in all phases of its use. Up to this day, I still remember the hissing noise of released tank pressure and the strong smell of gasoline it carried. No wonder it could ignite violently in what most people would call an explosion.

Mind you, switching to single line fuel tanks drastically lowered the occurrence of such incidents but did not eradicate them as vapours would still be released upon fill-ups and too many people would not care to take the tank off the boat during fill-ups, over fill  or spill gasoline all over it.

I hope you will publish your study results in AOMCI’s magazine.

Regards !

Bidddaddydan

Montreal (Quebec) Canada

 

There are no old outboards, just machines so well built, they have outlasted their owners !