Fuel Filler Caps

[Tom Cloud]

>
>> No actual experience with a gas tank .... but I can assure you that
>> 15 - 20 " Hg will collapse a gas tank .... I've done 55 gal drums. 
>> Wanna do sumpin' dumb (besides talking to me???).  Take a TV picture
>> tube, put it in a 55-gal drum (one that seals with the ring, where
>> the whole top comes off) and shoot it with a .30-.30 or such .....
>> it'll collapse the drum.  Almost as much fun as the time we rolled
>> the old Plymouth off the cliff (hee-hee)
>
>Now, you can't drop a line like that without telling the whole story, 
>so give....
>
>--steve
welll, it was a looong time ago (mebbe 1958 or so) ..... actually,
it was the same day we did the TV tube in the barrel.  Were out
in the woods summers 'tween here and Lampasas on a friend's grand-
parent's property.  I had the TV tube and he said he knew where
the barrel.  Someone else had the model 94 needed for the
experiment.  Anyways, it's sorta anti-climatic .... I mean
it doesn't take long to suck the drum up and then it's all over.
Now what?  We'd probably driven 45 minutes to get out there, and
it was summer and we were out of school in one of our parent's
cars.  Hot, sultry, scratchin', lookin' around, snickerin'
about the barrel ...... dang, lookie there, see that old
rust bucket (seems it was a 47 Plymouth)?  Wonder if it
rolls.  Check it out.  See if the battery will work the
radio.  Won't.  It's pretty shot.  Right next to about a
35 or 40 foot bluff (cliff sounds more exciting), so we
huff and puff an' finally nudge it off.  Starts real slow.
Sorta looks like those pictures of ships sinking.  The
front goes down, the back goes up.  Push a little more
and it rolls, bounces and lurches down the embankment.  Never
did hit head-on or turn over, but it did amuse a bunch of
15 and 16 year old goofballs.  We were all into electronics
together, all interested in what happens when things happen,
so this provided us with something to talk about as far as
springs, shocks, impact, etc.  Don't know what my friend told
his grandparents.  I know they didn't care about the old wreck,
it'd already been used for target practice, but I suspect they
didn't want it at the bottom of the hill in the gulley.

Tom Cloud <cloud at peaches.ph.utexas.edu>