grinding around a leaking diesel tank

On the basis diesel is less flammable than petrol. And as landy fuel tanks are a bitch to remove. Im wondering if grinding the rusty bolts is an option?

Couldn't you just drain the tank first? I drained mine then cut the bolts around it with no probs

The tank has been drained but has been leaking over bodywork for some time

I would happily grind next to it. Low chance of anything catching fire. Keep a hose next to you if your that worried.

Cheers mark

damp the area down and have a mate stood by to damp down at short intervals whilst grinding, it takes a fair bit for diesel to burn.


disclaimer: if you die doing it my way then you are entirely at fault for listening to me, but its the way i would do it if i had no other option.

if you throw a match in a beaker of derv it will extinguish the match, odds are you wont die

Make sure and film it just incase

itll be fine. it will smoke off before it burns.

the_wolf said:

make sure and film it just incase

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+1:d:d:d:d:d:d:d

the_wolf said:

Make sure and film it just incase

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this

but yeah, I've never had one go boom. yet.

my mate was giving me a hand to dismantle a rusty landy once, but he was sh.t scared paranoid about the thing blowing up, so I pretended to faff about with spanners and rusty bolts for five minutes until he wasnt looking, then cut the bugger off with an angle grinder. not the brightest thing I've ever done, considering the tank was half full of Petrol, but I'm still here to tell the tale.

My friend and I gas axed an old rangie petrol tank out of a chassis. We drained the tank, drilled holes in the bottom corners to get the dregs out, chucked a load of sand into the tank and removed the filler neck to leave a 5 or 6 inch diameter hole in the side to let the fumes out.

He was cutting away and there was a massive WOOOOMPHHH! with a shot of flame out of the hole. The tank looked like an inflated whoopy cushion afterward.

Lucky we left somewhere for the pressure to escape, otherwise it would have blown up in his face, and that he wasnt standing infront of the hole.

thats petrol, not deisel tho, petrol vapour is a good explosive, deisel isnt.

Slightly off topic, but I had a bit of a scare on a mates boat because of a ####ed fuel tank. For some reason the silly fooker had put a metal, portable petrol tank, with a faulty vent into a closed compartment next to the boat's battery, which had one of the terminals attached with a bit of wire because he had lost the bolt. There was also about an inch of sea water in the bottom of the locker so the petrol tank was almost floating. The worst thing was that I didn't find out about this interesting setup until we were 3 miles offshore.

martin1512 said:

Slightly off topic, but I had a bit of a scare on a mates boat because of a ####ed fuel tank. For some reason the silly fooker had put a metal, portable petrol tank, with a faulty vent into a closed compartment next to the boat's battery, which had one of the terminals attached with a bit of wire because he had lost the bolt. There was also about an inch of sea water in the bottom of the locker so the petrol tank was almost floating. The worst thing was that I didn't find out about this interesting setup until we were 3 miles offshore.

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Nice see all them warnings about venting the engine compartment and no sparks etc.. Are just scare mongering

redhand said:

Nice see all them warnings about venting the engine compartment and no sparks etc.. Are just scare mongering

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It had an outboard so no engine compartment. The battery and fuel tank were located under the seat of the console.

Can't you get a hacksaw blade in there?

as aboveid hapily do it all day long, keep a hose just inces your worried. can you get a recip saw in?

Thanks for your help everyone. Sorry about the typing, as am posting this from the hospital bed...managed to film a bit of the incident as requested...

VID

. :lol::hysterically_laughi:rofl: