Folklore Vs. Fact

FOLKLORE vs. FACT

Life lesson in a leaky gas tank

Quoting from the personal memoirs of U.S. Grant, “Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.”

Swap “motorcycling” for “wars,” and our stage is set: When I was a scrawny teenager, struggling with a Harley Big Twin three years older than me, I hung around the two-room Harley store and marveled at the stories told by the older guys.

“Couldn’t stop, had to lay ’er down,” went one saga, and I wondered how metal could have a better grip on the pavement than tires did.

“Grab the front brake and she’ll pitch ya right over the bars,” they said, which puzzled me, because if you hauled on my front brake, you might be able to feel the bike slow down.

In the more recent past, when the fullface helmet was invented, there was concern, mostly in England, that the lack of oxygen reaching the enclosed rider would make him dizzy, even unconscious-a notion quickly followed by the invention of padded bands around the bottom of the helmet, ’cause there was more than enough winter blast getting through.

When tetraethyl lead was removed from gas, there was panic in the paddock because lead was a lubricant and without it, or without expensive machine work, the valves would recess in their seats. But when I was racing cars in the pre-unleaded era, we used nonleaded 101 octane and not only did the valves not recess themselves, we didn’t have to clean that red sludge from the float bowls.

My skepticism is backed by facts, in so many words, so when the guys in my flat-track club mentioned that, of course, they drained their tanks between races, I said I didn’t and why should I?

Because gas melts fiberglass, they said, and, as is my habit, I thought, urn, it didn’t melt the tank on my vintage Honda roadracer, and it didn’t melt the four tanks I’ve had on my XR-750s, and it didn’t melt the tank on my Champion-framed Aermacchi. Why should it melt the tank on my Wood-Honda?

Then one day someone said, Hey, your paint seems ripply. And it did, so I mentioned the problem to someone who knows-instead of talks-in the person of Richard Pollock, famous on these pages as Mule Motorcycles.

Pollock said he’d finished one of his specials and it didn’t run right, no known reason. He checked the carbs and found some brownish, varnishy stuff coating the throats and bowls, and he determined it was resin from the tank dissolved by the fuel.

Oh, dear. When I was changing the jets on my Honda 450’s carb, I noticed some brown varnishy stuff and wondered, what could that be?

Alas, now I knew. Today’s pump gasoline, at least the swill sold in California, formulated for whoknowswhat, doesn’t cotton to fiberglass.

Then things got worse. I got some sealer and prudently removed the petcocks before sealing the tank...except that when I unscrewed the petcocks, they stuck and I spun the fittings, the ones that are supposed to be bonded to the tank.

Naturally, sealer or not, the tank seeped fuel. But not until it was race day, requiring withdrawal from the race, made worse by the fact that the only way I get series points is by taking the green flag.

No point using one of those quick-fix chemicals-tractor overhaul in a tube, we used to say-so I rasped and mixed resin and catalyst and fiberglass mat and patched the fittings. It’s all fixed now. think. Took the 450 to practice and there wasn’t a sign of a seep. Problem solved, hope.

The moral? Just because everybody knows something doesn’t mean it’s not so. -Allan Girdler