James Sweet wrote in news:SjaXg.2289$P92.2278
@trndny02:

I'm near Seattle, the tank is metal, if you want some of the gas you're
welcome to come and get it.


Nuts...I'm in Charleston on the other side of the asteroid.

The metal tank, if full and without water in it, would store gasoline
nearly indefinately. Plastic cans, i.e. polypropylene, will NOT. Open
the bilge of any boat with a poly gas tank. You ALWAYS smell gasoline.
There's a reason. Poly is made of huge molecules with "large" spaces
between them. It doesn't show, but there is always a constant "leakage"
of the lighter, smaller molecules THROUGH the poly. To reduce, but not
eliminate it, they make the tanks thicker, which increases the path
making more resistance, but the light elements we want to save STILL leak
out through the plastic. Metal, even thin metal, is far more dense and
leakage is hard to detect through the metal. It's why airplanes have
metal fuel tanks in the wings and why they keep them plumb full to the
filler cap.

Another sweet thing was the old Evinrude pressurized gas tanks. They
were all metal and pressurized by a 2nd hose from the crankcase pulses in
the 2-stroke engines. No fuel pump was needed, no diaphram to fail. You
had to pressurize the tank, initially, by pumping a little airpump button
on top to get the motor started. Because these tanks NEVER "vented", in
and out every time the sun rose and set, the gas would last for years in
them stored with the cap on tight. They didn't leak if inverted so long
as the ball valves in the engine fitting didn't leak, making an explosion
hazard of course. As long as they'd hold pressure, they were great. Of
course, that wouldn't "do" in the modern boat business. Those tanks must
have cost Evinrude serious money.....

The pressure in them actually IMPROVED keeping the light elements in the
gas because of the pressure on them all the time...even stored.



--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.