Puncturing a gas tank

[subversivegrrl]

I'm working on a post-apocalypse novel and need to hamstring the bad guy by having someone surreptitiously puncture the gas tank on his transport, so the gas drains out fairly slowly and leaves him unexpectedly stranded out in the middle of nowhere. (I guess it's all "nowhere" at that point.)

So my question is, how difficult would it actually be to put a hole through the metal of a gas tank? Could it be done with something like a wide-bladed knife? It would have to be some kind of human-powered action, no power tools.

There's surprisingly little information out there - the majority of it has to do with replacing a tank that *has* a hole in it, often from vandalism, so it must be not too difficult... I just don't know how much effort would be required.

Comments

[lizvogel]

Instead of the gas tank, could your saboteur go after the gas line?

IME of older cars, the line that feeds gas from the tank to the engine is a narrow tube of bendable metal (so it can be routed around all the other stuff down there). They're prone to rusting out especially at the bends even under normal long-term use. Depending on age of vehicle and hand strength of person, they might be able to just bend it back and forth until it starts to crack at an already-weak point.

Depending on size of crack, fuel will still feed through to the engine while also dribbling quite a bit out onto the ground. Vehicle might or might not run a little rough, but it'll still run (until the fuel's gone). Ask me how I know this....

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, I like where that could go. Do newer vehicles have something non-metallic? (I'm thinking that it might have been replaced. We're talking about a 1960's military utility vehicle that has been in recent use.) If the saboteur could just nick something quickly with a blade, that would take care of the time pressure.

I need to go back and look at the diagrams to see where the gas line runs and if someone could easily roll under there and get to it before they're seen.

Dang it

[subversivegrrl]

I'm still new at Dreamwidth, that last comment was me

Re: Dang it

[lizvogel]

Do newer vehicles have something non-metallic?

This, I can't speak to; my definition of 'newer car' is still, um, old. ;-)

If it's a 1960s vehicle and you're writing contemporary/future, it's almost certainly been replaced at some point. Possibly more than once. Whether that was with original-equivalent parts or something more modern depends on model and when and on the person doing it.