More beer.....lots of it.

After removing the fuel pump from the tank, checking all the in tank pipes and replacing the burnt out in tank cable. ( how in the name of f**k does putting 12v into the tank not explode ??, changing out the fuel sender and putting it all back together again. i needed a dog to kick and looooots of alcohol.

Fuel seems to vanish in the feed pipe. Needsto be cranked a while before it fires, fuel sender leaks, and now the ABS light is on, i believe something is behind the left boot panel l touched ?? And my replaced steering rack seems be drinking the fluid as before ..... Oh joy.

 

On my 94 I found multiple internal fuel line clamps barely tight and one was disconnected.
The pumps were just dumping the gas back into the tank.

 

In answer to your question, the air to fuel vapor stoichiometric ratio isn't right to support combustion in the tank. Too much fuel vapor, not enuf oxygen for combustion

You can drop a lit match into the tank and it will go out... As long at the temp is above about -30F, from memory, below that temp the vapor pressure of the gas drops to a point that the vapor and air can ignite.

Doug

 

Not something I would be happy to prove empirically on my own car!!

 

I'm 68, back when I was 9 years old at a small mom and pop neighborhood store, I forgot what the conversation was about but it ended with the owners son telling me, you can fill an empty oil can, the kind that you opened with a V shaped opener, anyway he said fill it to the top with petro and drop a lit match in and it will go out. I did it and the match did go out. I have thought about this many, many times and it scares me. The store owners son was an adult, I don't know what age he was but I remember he was in university. I can't imagine someone that age telling a 9 year old to do that. I would not even do that now. Scary, scary, scary!

 

Yeah, I learned that in one of my ChE class in college. I still wouldn't tell a 9 YO to do it, though.

Stoichiometric ratio for combustion, like natural gas (methane) is only explosive when it is approx 4-13% by volume to air, lower or higher than that, it won't ignite. Which is one reason your gasoline tank is much, much less likely to go up in flames/go boom than your electric car battery. Surface area of gas in the tank, being another

Doug