Fuel-Go Juice

[YllwFvr]

Whatever your vehicle runs on you will need lots of it. My transportation gets 35mpg but even so I need to fuel up often enough.

So. If Z day happens where will you be fueling up? I doubt your going to run down to the local wawa/7-11/Dandy. No electric=no gas. You could suck it out of other vehicles of course. A nice caddy or Durango is sure to have a fat tank of gas. It wouldn't hurt to have a five gallon cell in your trunk/bed either.
But you can't deny there is alot of petrol in the ground, how will we get it out? Any decent base should have several drums of gas stored. Diesel is going to be even harder to procure because far fewer stations have diesel tanks.

How about when it starts to go bad? It only lasts so long after all, even with additives. Unless we have a petro chemical engineer lurking around the zrt we are going to be in trouble within a couple years even if we survive.
Does anyone have any experience storing cars and can guess how long it lasts stored?

[mcmcallister]

ive heard that gas can last up to year and deisel 2 years...but with additives and stored carefully i believe

[nepawolf]

As for pumping it out of the tanks at the fueling stations, a hand crank or electric pump can be scrounged or made easily and use garden hose "requisitioned" from local hardware stores to get down far enough into the tank. As far as storage time, I'm not sure about gas, but diesel becomes gel-like after real long storage time (20-30 years IIRC). The gel can then be taken and cut with ethanol to reliquify and make it work in diesel vehicles to some extent. Of course, straight up ethanol can be used in gas vehicles, but it does rot all of the rubber parts in the fuel system.

[PAallterrain]

(09-24-2009 03:37 AM)nepawolf Wrote:  As for pumping it out of the tanks at the fueling stations, a hand crank or electric pump can be scrounged or made easily and use garden hose "requisitioned" from local hardware stores to get down far enough into the tank. As far as storage time, I'm not sure about gas, but diesel becomes gel-like after real long storage time (20-30 years IIRC). The gel can then be taken and cut with ethanol to reliquify and make it work in diesel vehicles to some extent. Of course, straight up ethanol can be used in gas vehicles, but it does rot all of the rubber parts in the fuel system.

Any big rig stranded on the side of the road will have plenty of diesel to fill the two tanks in my truck. Aside from that, i can use heating oil from houses, or kerosene if necessary. Other sources include heavy equipment, run down fueling stations, or any large job site would have diesel fuel on site.

For gasoline, start draining car gas tanks or go to the local mini-mart and siphon.

I'd suggest a few jerry cans full of fuel to be carried along with you. That way you have extra storage. Just running with your tank would be a bad idea.

[YllwFvr]

I'd imagine you diesel folks would want to get a supply pretty quickly as it's not as readily available as gasoline.
Siphoning requires the container be lower than what your pulling from doesn't it? That would generally rule out siphoning gas from stations as the tanks are well underground.
I would likely find a more suitable vehicle and borrow it. My little hatch back isnt exactly the best. I'd like some off road capabilities.

[PAallterrain]

(09-27-2009 01:48 PM)YllwFvr Wrote:  I'd imagine you diesel folks would want to get a supply pretty quickly as it's not as readily available as gasoline.
Siphoning requires the container be lower than what your pulling from doesn't it? That would generally rule out siphoning gas from stations as the tanks are well underground.
I would likely find a more suitable vehicle and borrow it. My little hatch back isnt exactly the best. I'd like some off road capabilities.

Actually i am much less worried about finding diesel fuel then i would be gasoline. I'd say the majority of the rush will be for gasoline. As i stated, diesel is much more flexible then gasoline is. And it is used in many more applications where it could be sourced. Where everyone will be hitting up vehicle gas tanks and gas pumps for gasoline, i can use home heating oil, or find a construction site or farm and avoid the area's that will be high traffic.

Cheap hand pumps will work wonders for alot of those underground tanks.

[CommonHighrise]

Now, as a purely emergency measure, there is a way to rapidly extract fuel from a vehicles gas tank, even if it has an anti-siphon valve on the filler neck.

Get yourself one of these;


Slide under a vehicle, punch a nice big hole up through the fuel tank (hooligan tool ftw, could also use a rock and the emergency jack off your vehicle), and slide the drain bin underneath. Then either pump from the pan, or just lift and pour.

Not tidy, and leaves the 'donor' vehicle crippled, but it's fast and effective on nearly all types of gasoline vehicles.

[YukonDon]

Interesting thread...... How about we just commendeer a few big rigs with fuel tank trailers. There will be plenty on the highways.....

[nepawolf]

(11-17-2009 02:34 PM)CommonHighrise Wrote:  Now, as a purely emergency measure, there is a way to rapidly extract fuel from a vehicles gas tank, even if it has an anti-siphon valve on the filler neck.

Get yourself one of these;


Slide under a vehicle, punch a nice big hole up through the fuel tank (hooligan tool ftw, could also use a rock and the emergency jack off your vehicle), and slide the drain bin underneath. Then either pump from the pan, or just lift and pour.

Not tidy, and leaves the 'donor' vehicle crippled, but it's fast and effective on nearly all types of gasoline vehicles.

WOW! That's a great idea. The closest I've ever seen or heard of close to that is putting a gas can underneath and punching the hole. Be careful of older vehicles with that, there's usually sediment on the bottom of the tank. Alot of vehicles have a metal plate under the tank to protect it. The plate can be punched through, too, it's just harder.

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(11-17-2009 03:21 PM)YukonDon Wrote:  Interesting thread...... How about we just commendeer a few big rigs with fuel tank trailers. There will be plenty on the highways.....

I think we had a conversation on the ZRT thread on PAFOA about having a convoy with a tanker truck or two in it. Does anyone know how to tell which compartments in those trucks are what type of fuel? Confusing gas and diesel would not be a good thing.

[YukonDon]

One other idea.....rather than trying to get anything from underground tanks at gas stations, it would probably be much easier to get large quantities as the fuel storage tanks located all over our state. There are a couple very large ones around the Harrisburg area....