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It has to do with welding a fuel tank…not flatulence.

I don’t know what made me think it was safe to weld a fuel tank from my old Hurricaine race bike when I was a youngster - lack of money?  Boredom?  A willing accomplice?  You guessed it:  All three of them.

I had a buddy living at my house at the time and between us, we had quite the tool setup.  I had the air compressor and tools, and he had the welder.  I decided that I had stored my old Hurricaine race bike long enough and it was now time to sell it.  That said, it had developed a leak around an area that had been bondo’d over from a previous crash from a previous owner.

Since I couldn’t sell the bike with a leaky tank, the next best thing was to fix it.  We decided to weld the tank as I had heard of it being doe before.  It went like this:

1. Drain fuel out of tank
2. Consume adut beverage
3. Run the garden hose through the tank to flush out all the fuel
4. Repeat step #2
5. Consume adult beverage
6. Wonder if this is going to finally get us fame and fortune via the Darwin Awards

It was kind of funny when we finally got to the welding part.  We knew it was pretty dumb, but two guys, a couple beers, a welder, something to weld, and boredom is not a good combination.  I think I even turned down the radio as if I was driving and a cop pulled up behind me.

It was only a ‘tear’ in the metal that needed to be repaired.  One straight weld about one inch long.  My buddy started off with a quick hit of the trigger just to see what would happen.  No boom.  Life was good.  He did that a few more times, and still no boom. 

We decided to actually lay down a bead of weld to make the repair.  Immediately upon hitting the trigger, I heard this real deep ‘WHOOM!” in concert with a little light show of about a two foot momentary blue flame shootng out of the filler neck.  It startled me a little, then I remembered I was the guy hiding behind the roller toolbox.  It was then I looked at my buddy’s face.  Instant cold sweat and a nice green flesh tone.  He remaind calm, sat back, and didn’t say a word. 

All I could come up with was “dude”.  That was all that needed to be said.  As my buddy sat there contemplating his visit with Jesus, I said “what do you think?”  Normal mortals would have walked away at this point, but we had the aid of liquid courage called beer.  He looked at me with a grin that said “can you believe this?” without actually saying it.  He then said, we should try again, but this time lt’s leave the tank full of water to kill the fumes.

We set up the tank to do just that.  It was now on its side with water trickling out of the down side of the filler neck.  We were still having fun at this point, but now it was about the challenge, just like rocket-car-man.  He fired up the welding and we both hear a hissing sound (not water boiling, but airflow as if something was going to ignite…again).  He said “I’m out”.  While I was a pretty good welder at that time, I decided that maybe some JB Weld would be a better option.

I still keep in touch with this guy although he’s back in Michigan.  It comes up almost every time we talk.