I wanted to add. During those days when gas tanks where failing at a very high rate. In our rustbelt. We all to frequently heard of some person or other that was involved in an accident when dealing with their own gas tanks.

We used caution continuously. Plus the best practices we could come up with at the time.. Even with that we got caught once. A supplier sent us a batch of tougher trouble type service light bulbs. Of another brand. The first one of that batch we used somehow ignited the gas fumes. I got caught in the blast.

It may have been the higher service temperature of the bulb or it just self fractured in service. In any event it ignited the fumes. Today of course I would recommend only led type work lights. Around working with leaking gas tanks. That have not been neutralized.

I also wanted to mention. If the car we where working on was getting a urethane exterior tank coating. To keep the flow of work going we could not tie up a hoist. With no tank it is possible to start the car and drive it back out until you are ready to install the refurbished gas tank. Then drive it back in when ready for it.

Until fuel injection occurred. There is enough gas in the average float bowl to do this. With carbs.

On closer examination those substitute bulbs by our supplier where made in the orient. Examining others in the batch . I found the glass to be very thin. My caution today remains as it once was. Be very careful working on leaking gas tanks. Besides the pretty obvious the unexpected can play into a bad situation. As a result of the mass failures of metal gas tanks at that time. Plastic tanks came into vogue.

When you still buy a new car here. In our rustbelt or other bad ones. It is wise to look at the quality of their metal brake lines and fuel lines. Some brands still use poorly protected metal. On brands like Hyundia and Kia just take a brush and grease them all. We dealt with so many leaking lines I cannot even guess at the total numbers. You could probably fill a stadium with the gas tank total. We were never greedy or dishonest. It was even a problem back then in anything automotive service related.

Yet nothing like what goes on today all too often. For example the air we breath has about an 80 percent nitrogen content. So why pay to have your tires filled with nitrogen unless you have a race car.

High purity nitrogen is dryer but I cannot even see the advantage of that. The purity you get is subjective anyways. A lot of places have their own nitrogen generators. More and more semi scams plying on customers as time moves forward. To me it is just the way of the times.

Honda had a massive fuel tank failure problem for example. Since they had a free replacement program that many of the owners that came to us did not know about. We directed them to the dealerships. Had to have been hundreds of them. We were just seeing the start of the oil pan failures in sizable numbers when we got out of the business as well.

You treat customers decently and friendly. Word gets around. I still think or at least hope this still is the case today.

If you are going to keep the car for a substantial time. If you can get the lines that are pre bent in the engine compartment is not bad. Otherwise it is a miserable job to replace them all. Personally I like the lines that have a plastic type coating where only the very ends are exposed to the corrosive enviroment. I had a look at the lines on a 2018 model not long ago. Look to be the same poorly protected lines with the same marginal in comparison to other brands coatings for protection. About 2012 they did add a plastic shield over their lines running under the floor pan. This was not a cure for our rustbelt area of operation.