fuel tank fires

I think the market has sold a lot of products such as tank plates etc. thanks to the paranoia about this totally unfounded fear. I would love to see some of these products in crash test. You are more likely to have a Mustang burn due to a dried out rubber fuel hose then anything else. Like was mentioned earlier, newer cars are safer thanks to better seat belt designs, seats with head rests, softer materials in the interior, crumple zones, air bags etc. One good piece of advise once your car is in good tune, is to always have a fire extinguisher. You may also be able to help someone else in need.

It is always more dangerous to drive a mid

60's car than a new car. About 25 years ago,

on my way home from work, in Stockholm Sweden,

a bus hit a Volvo Amazon from behind and the fuel

tank erupted and spilled fuel all over the people

inside the car. It was a young mother and her two

children. All three burned to death. I would put a safety

barrier between the trunk and back seat on any

old Mustang or any other old car like the Volvo that

I drive more or less daily to minimize the risk like

I would also install and use seat belts.

/Bo

Bo -

I've driven in Sweden, and based on the size of the moose fences along the highways, I'd guess that backing into a moose or having one charge the rear of your car has been eliminated as a cause of fuel tank explosions.

Lyle

Lyle,

My Shelby would outrun a moose any day, with or without

fence. Fun aside, when I drove the Shelby 67 this summer

from the Club of American Ford's Convention to our summer

house, a drive of about 200 miles, a moose came up about a 100

yards in front of me, stopped in the middle of the road and

admired my car. It is a nice view and I was sitting there looking

at her for several minutes before she ran into the woods on the

other side of the 2 lane highway. Swedish moose cost several

people their life every year when they collide on the roads.

Over the years I have had several close encounters with these

large animals.

/Bo

As a fellow Ozzy, I doubt that the rubbish they sell us and call fuel has enough Octane in it to cause a fire.

I’m new to this forum and just read the comments here about Mustang gas tank fires. I still have the video of the program that Bryant Gumble did on “Mustang’s dirty Secret” In that program at lot of hysteria was promoted about how dangerous these cars are. But if you do some math using the numbers from the program you would get the following;

• The program states that there were 30 fatalities in Mustang fire related accidents

• Ok so if we accept that number as accurate…. what is the probability of your Mustang’s gas tank catching fire?

• Using production figures from the “Standard Catalog of Mustang” by Brad Bowling ( and I should note here that the only Mustangs in question were built from April 1964 to the end of the 1970 model year, In 1971 ford changed the design that located the tank as a separate item protected by a full trunk floor)

• Production during this period amounted 2,566,839 cars

• Let us assume that those cars traveled an average of 100,000 miles (I know some didn’t and some have gone 200000 plus miles) for the sake of this scenario let’s say 100,000 miles was the average. That would mean that on average vintage Mustangs have traveled 2.56 Billion miles Yes that is with a “B”

• So with 30 fatalities being attributed to gas tank fires.

• That would mean that your changes of being hurt would be 1 in 8.6 Billion

• Being conservative….. let’s say (and Gumble’s program did) that a million Mustangs of this vintage are still on the road. If we again use the 100,000 mile figure and look at the last 43 years and still use the 30 fatality number your chances of being hurt in a fire are 1 in 1.43 Billion.

I guess from this I would say….. your chances of being hurt in a gas tank fire are as likely as it would be that you would be struck by lightning on your birthday at noon!

<b></b>

there is a decimal point error in my last post the total number of miles driven should have read 256 Billion miles not the the 2.56 that my fat fingers typed.

Good analysis.

Jim

So, as long as I don't back into a moose, I'm ok for not having my car catch on fire? I've been driving an old Mustang daily for several years, and it's never caught on fire, but, I've never backed into a moose with it, though.<img src=images/icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle>