The Handling of Petrol

The following article was taken from the weekly magazine "The Auto" price 2d of May 1928 which ran a regular section called "Notes for the Owner Driver" and this offering is titled "The Handling of Petrol".

The owner driver should know something about the handling of petrol and how to get the best results in economy and safety, both in use and storage. Generally, the man who owns and runs his own car will buy his petrol from the pump or in 2 gallon cans.

Many owners are still chary of patronising the wayside or garage pump. They have the idea, whatever it's worth, that if they buy their spirit in sealed cans they can be sure of getting the real thing and the right quality. There is a great deal to be said for this point of view.
The trouble of storage is eliminated, since the 2 gallon cans can be bought in on the car and stored in any corner of the garage if in reasonably small quantities. In filling up, too, the can forms a handy approximate measure - quite near enough for the owners or drivers purposes, and in buying he has tangible evidence of the amount he is getting.

The 2 gallon tin method for the small car owner is a convenient one because it is safe and simple, and it allows him to carry a sealed quantity as a reserve in his car taken from his own stock, while it also allows him to keep a small stock in hand and to be independent of the filling station.

Buying spirit haphazard on the road is not quite the scientific method of procedure, although one cannot but admit that the filling stations and pumps have proved great conveniences in the rapidity with which one can get replenished and off again.

Handling petrol is a job which requires care and watchfulness. It is so very easily ignitable and the dangers from an ignition so great that precautions should be taken to make things as sale as humanly possible - and this is not difficult to do.

Petrol cans should be stored in galvanised bins outside the garage, and with a lock and key so that no unauthorised person can get at it, and a sand bin should be installed under a roof so that the wet does not get into the sand. The sand should be instantly available and a small hand shovel - a fire shovel - should be kept in the sand so that it can be instantly be transferred to any seat of fire.

In the garage should be a fire extinguisher (as well as upon the car). One of the larger Pyrene extinguishers is perhaps the most suitable. With such an extinguisher a fire can be put out quickly and effectively and by the merest novice. Combustion cannot be maintained in the presence of the mist from a Pyrene. Whenever there is petrol there should be sand and a chemical extinguisher. Always have ready a refill for any chemical extinguisher, and see to it that it is re-charged as soon as possible after being used. This is a most important point. It is easy in the after effects of the excitement of a fire to replace an extinguisher unchanged, and the danger of this is apparent. One should also order refills as soon as refills are loaded into an extinguisher.

Filtering petrol used to be considered a most important matter. Nowadays one sees petrol being poured straight out of cans into the filler of the car. True, most fillers are fitted with filters, and most cars have a filter in line between the carburettor and the source of supply. But the careful motorist will find it pays to use a wide mouthed funnel with a big area gauze filter of such a small mesh as will intercept water. The gauze should be of such an area as not to restrict the rapid flow of petrol through the funnel. Many motorists have become impatient with the slow flow through funnels with small area gauzes and have taken the gauze out. It is a mistake which may result in a hold-up on the road, and perhaps considerable delay and inconvenience recurring at unexpected times because foreign matter gets into the tank and is difficult to get out, and particles may at any time get through into the carburettor and obstruct the jet orifices.

Chris Dugdale.

Editor's note. At the time this article was written, petrol sold at one shilling and threepence half-penny a gallon (6p)!