[timwilky]

ok, Diesel spills.

I used to work at a truck & bus manufacturers R&D centre. We had to do some pretty silly testing. One of the regular stuff was on fuel tanks.

Some of the testing was related to high speed fill capabilities. Could the breathers cope. and would we get foaming back etc. Imagine filling tanks from a high speed pump with the expectancy that it could foam back all over you. yuck, always a job for the new boy.

But now you got a fuel tank full of diesel, what you going to do with it before you pour the fuel back into the storage tanks. Roll over tests.

It might sound silly in a post about spills. But the tests performed for type approval to show compliance with C&U rules do say how much fuel can leak out of an over turned fuel tank. A lot of my testing was as a result of the introduction of sintered breathers in order to pass these overturn tests I never witnessed a fail in about 50 tests I personally must have conducted.



The breathers work. So do the filler caps. They seal well enough that a full tank can be overturned and less than an egg cup of fuel leaks out. So why do we experience fuel spills on the road from upright tanks.

I can only put it down to either a failure to fit the cap correctly or more likely damaged seals. Maybe the condition of the cap seals should be part of the MOT.