Refuelling whilst still mounted

[oldrider]

Over the years I have never seen a bike (or car for that matter) on fire at a petrol station.

Well, in 56 years of riding I have seen this only once and it was a guy doing exactly that, sitting on his hot bike and overfilling the tank! (Late 1950's it was, I was still an apprentice)

The fuel caught fire and he was badly burnt and the bike was destroyed when he dropped it and raced around like a man possessed, SCREAMING his bloody head off!

The service station owner put his fire and the bike out while an ambulance took the biker away to the Lower Hutt hospital.

I was not on my bike but was driving my mighty 1937 Austin seven "convertible" at the time!

I think about it sometimes and wonder how his sex life has been compared to mine over all those years!

(I also think about a girl my age who had polio as a kid and spent the rest of her life in an iron lung at Burwood hospital too! I was one of the lucky ones! )

I don't and have never been told not to, fill my bike while still sitting on it but not entirely because of that incident though!

I will (and do) wear my helmet when I go in to pay if I feel like it! (flip front helmet, they can see I'm an old cunt FFS!)

Tigers have a 24 litre tank and if you overfill them with a hot engine, the heat expands the cold fuel and it just gets pushed out of the overflow pipe all over the road and gets wasted!

This is especially noticeable if you get held up inside the servo paying for the fuel and come out to a bloody great puddle of discharged petrol under your bike...not a good look and "I" have just paid for it!!!!!!

It's not rocket science to work out the odds of how bad it would be to be that one in thousands who got their bits burned off for fuck all gain, is it! Well, is it?

[Pixie]

I'll make my own judgements as to risk. I don't need some minimum-wage fuckwit telling me what to do. If they were smarter than me, they wouldn't be working there at 30 years of age.

How many people have been incinerated directly due to sitting on their bike while filling it with petrol from a petrol station nozzle? I'll wager ye that it's fuck all. I like that convenience:risk ratio.

Similar argument to NZTA's defense of cheesecutters."how many motorcyclists have they killed"

[Big Dave]

I find that it's run 10 pages is more interesting than the topic!

It only needed that one dufus moment and the pain of a ride home with burning testicles from spilled fuel to convince me to get off the bike. If you've ever got linament or deep heat on the 'nads during injury treatment you have some idea of the discomfort an errant groin full of 95 induces.

[Kickaha]

If you've ever got linament or deep heat on the 'nads during injury treatment you have some idea of the discomfort an errant groin full of 95 induces.

Do you think 91 would be easier on them?

[Pixie]

I usually fill my bike sitting on it.(if its a splash n go I dont bother. Usually though its because Im off on a ride to empty the tank. Reason being that extra gas gets me another 50k's outa town. If servo man takes exception hey no worries His forecourt his rules. But Im going to another servo next and all fillups after-as is my choice.
Not that I give a shit but has anyone in New Zealand ever caught on fire as a result of filling up astride their steed?
Or in Australasia?

Shit you've got an economical bike.What is it? A Scunthorpe Weasehound?
To get an extra 50 km on my bike,I've got to squeeze an extra 3 litres of gas into it.

[FROSTY:Me]

Yamaha xj750/900.the way the fuel cap "mount" is desighned when it seems to be full you have another couple of litres to go. Not worth bothering if just riding round town, well worth it if heading to mangawhai to visit my folks or ridin to taupo/tauranga.

[Big Dave]

Do you think 91 would be easier on them?

Of course. They may ping under load however.

[NordieBoy]

Next time you go into a SHELL SHOP have a look at the list of things posted on a plackard next to the pumps.
Along with cell phones, ciggys. non regulation containers, is a pic of a bike with the rider astride it.

Usually a pic of a fullface helmet and a road bike...

[pritch]

Of course. They may ping under load however.

Sorry, gotta share the love...

We all like to do our own risk assessments. Many though are not particularly good at this, it's probably possible to find smokers who worry about terrorist attacks.
Never mind the "Hold my beer and watch this..." types.

[Mikkel]

Yes it should insulate you from the gun. A potential difference can still exist between the gun and vehicle though.

Yes, but if the nozzle of the gun is insulated from you - then the spark has to be drawn from you to earth - not nozzle to earth. I am pretty confident that the fuel pumps are well grounded and as such no static charge should be able to accumulate on them. The nozzle will in most cases make contact with the vehicle before you start pouring the fuel - so any static charge on the car should be grounded before you start pouring.

Why run the unnecessary risk? For those who want a read on cellphones...Urban myth maybe yes maybe no...The U tube one is quite good

http://urbanlegends.about.com/librar...y/aa062399.htm

Nice video - but it doesn't reflect the reality of filling a vehicle very well. The aluminium foil acts as an antennae with lots and lots of very small gaps. The antennae will pick up some of the energy (very little energy mind) contained within the radio signal from the cellphone and potential differences across these narrow gaps may cause a spark to occur. It's pretty much the same as what happens when you put metal in a microwave oven - albeit at a much lower power.

Yes, the cellphone signal may well deposit minuscule amounts of energy into conductors around you. Unless there's a tiny gap of just the right size in exactly the right place relative to your fuel vapour/air concentration gradient nothing is going to happen.

If you worry about starting fires with your cellphone then don't use it. I suggest that you also abstain from operating any vehicle whatsoever, make sure you don't live near power cables, take great care not to burn any of your food and sleep in a coffin (very few people have died lying in coffins, the same can not be said for beds)!

Tigers have a 24 litre tank and if you overfill them with a hot engine, the heat expands the cold fuel and it just gets pushed out of the overflow pipe all over the road and gets wasted!

This is especially noticeable if you get held up inside the servo paying for the fuel and come out to a bloody great puddle of discharged petrol under your bike...not a good look and "I" have just paid for it!!!!!!

The thermal expansion coefficient of petrol is in the order of 1.0x10^-3/°C, which means that for every 10°C temperature difference the volume will change approximately by 1%, e.g. heat 10 litres by 20°C and it will expand to a volume of 10.2 litres.

On my bike I actually get to a point where I can keep on putting in petrol at a very slow rate - the level doesn't change. The petrol just goes down the overflow hose - and it takes a little while for it to actually get all the way through the hose to the ground.

[awayatc]

So basicly if you fill up your cellphone at Shell without taking your helmet off your balls may get painfully burned if you are a wanker.....?
Got it.....

[steve_t]

Of course. They may ping under load however.

ROFL. Might need to install a knock sensor

[FROSTY:Me]

HMMMM--a thought --strictly for arguements sake. Biker1 sitts astride his beasty which is on its rubber clad wheels and him wearing boots with rubber soles. Biker two has METAL sidestand firmly onto concrete. Ida thought that with an electrical ground being there the likelyhood of a cuircuit was greater with stand down.

[sleemanj]

HMMMM--a thought --strictly for arguements sake. Biker1 sitts astride his beasty which is on its rubber clad wheels and him wearing boots with rubber soles. Biker two has METAL sidestand firmly onto concrete. Ida thought that with an electrical ground being there the likelyhood of a cuircuit was greater with stand down.

I'm no sparky, but it's more about the potential static charge difference between the two. If you rub your feet on a nylon carpet to build up a static charge, your victim doesn't have to be grounded to get zapped, and if they are grounded, they still get zapped if you're not :-)

If your bike WAS grounded then there'd be less chance of a discharge, because you've already equalised the charge with the pump before hooking up.

But a stand onto concrete, I unless it's pissing down with rain, I doubt you're well grounded.

To summarise, you want to make sure the potential is the same, best practice would be to touch the nozzle to the bike, away from tank opening, before you start pumping. That way any static spark isn't going to ignite potential fumes in the tank.

Doesn't stop you overfilling and pouring gas all over a hot engine and your nether regions though

[BoristheBiter]

HMMMM--a thought --strictly for arguements sake. Biker1 sitts astride his beasty which is on its rubber clad wheels and him wearing boots with rubber soles. Biker two has METAL sidestand firmly onto concrete. Ida thought that with an electrical ground being there the likelyhood of a cuircuit was greater with stand down.

unless your bike does not have a battery then it has the - side to ground, +/- thing, yes even if it is turned off