My husband has a 1969 mustang coupe. It has a 302 that he built in it and a racing transmittion. It is his baby he really loves that car so I want to replace his old gas tank with a racing tank that wont blow up if he gets hit from behind. can anyone help me I'm kind of dumb when it comes to this kind of stuff

 

He's not going to blow up if he is rear ended but anyways...

What you want is a fuel cell

http://www.mustangdepot.com/onlineca...s/pro_cell.htm

Going to set you back more than $1500

 

Cars don't blow up. That's a Hollywood invention. The standard formula is three sticks of high explosive and 5-10 gallons of rubber cement. (Gasoline flames are too light in color for the camera, but the rubber cement has nice oily nasty-looking flames).

Cars to burn, though, and if the rear bumper is smashed into the axle, the rear end of a rear-tank car may catch fire. I have spent untold hours in junkyards, seen tens of thousands of wrecks, and less than ten of them caught fire.

For a added measure of safety, though, you could add a steel plate behind the back seat. Any Mustang supplier could provide this. There have been approximately 100 Mustang fires since 1964. That's spread over more than 2 million cars and nearly 50 years. If you look into it, you'll find that fatal shark attacks are more common. Really. So relax and enjoy the car.

 

truth^^^^^^

Here's an article that makes driving a mustang sound like a horror story. They seem to address restoring a mustang as a sin or something :
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/...ain47539.shtml


Seriously, like 2+2GT said, shark attacks are more common.

 

Thanks for your help I had no idea a fuel cell would cost that much I will have to save a bit more money.

 

Key line in the entire article is this one...

"Harold Gielow was incinerated. The police say Harold was going faster than conditions would allow."

People don't slow down, they get hurt or killed and they (or their parents) don't want to accept any responsibility...

 

Easily 90% of the wrecked Mustangs I have seen are smashed in the front, from people driving stupid-fast. Your husband is probably in much greater danger from getting struck by lightning than his gas tank. CBS has been after Mustangs for years, but they get little traction because these incidents are quite rare.

This from another forum:

"There were 2.6 million Mustangs built from 64-70 with the gas tank/trunk floor design. There were 75 confirmed fires and 2 deaths according to the figures from TV. Of the two deaths, one was from a high speed impact with the "exploding" Mustang being parked in the road. I figure the risk percentage as being pretty low plus I know the faults of the car and accept them as a risk of driving it. You cannot expect a 35 year old vehicle to be as safe as the newest cars coming off the line. And with the safety recalls of the new vehicles for unsafe door latches or improper switches that cause fires I'm not so sure that new is always better!
We can however make modifications to improve the safety of the cars and newer and better improvements are being developed all the time. Also keep in mind that other cars of that era also used that same design, including some well known European makes!

Scott
National Parts Depot"

And this about shark attacks:

In 2000, the year with the most recorded shark attacks, there were 79 shark attacks reported worldwide, 16 of them fatal[1]. In 2005 and 2006 this number decreased to 61 and 62 respectively, while the number of fatalities dropped to only four per year[1]. Of these attacks, the majority occurred in the United States (53 in 2000, 40 in 2005 and 39 in 2006)[2]. The New York Times reported in July 2003 that there had been only one fatal attack in the previous year.[3]

The United States has had more shark attacks (1,032) than any other country[4]. According to the International Shark Attack File, the states in the U.S. where the most attacks have occurred are Florida, Hawaii, California, South Carolina and North Carolina[4]. Outside the U.S., Australia and South Africa have had the most attacks[5]. As of 2009, the ISAF recorded a total of 2,251 attacks worldwide since 1580, with 464 attacks being fatal[5]. The location with the most recorded shark attacks is New Smyrna Beach, Florida[6].

The Florida Museum of Natural History compares these statistics with the much higher rate of deaths from other, less feared causes; for example, several thousand people die annually from lightning strikes[7]. It is estimated that a person's chance of getting attacked by a shark is 1 in 11.5 million, and a person's chance of getting killed by a shark is 1 in 264.1 million[8]. The annual number of people who drown is 3,306, whereas the annual number of shark fatalities is 1[9]. In comparison, humans kill 100 million sharks each year[10].

Thus when the facts are examined it can be seen that a shark attack is one of the rarest ways for humans to die. On average, there are a minuscule 5 fatal shark attacks per year worldwide. Elephants and tigers together kill 100 people every year, execution takes the lives of 2,400 people, 22,000 people die from drug overdose, traffic accidents kill an average of 1,200,000 people per year, and starvation kills 8,000,000 every single year. In 2009, more people were killed from being crushed by soda machines than were killed by shark attacks.

So enjoy the Mustang, and stay away from soda machines.

 

Unless he is racing the car you really shouldn't need a fuel cell. As stated already its a LOT of money and he's stands a better chance of getting struck by lightening.. twice!

That said.. my great grandmother _was_ struck by lightening.. twice the same day! That was way before my time but I remember reading the news clipping they kept when I was younger. Tough old bird! They don't make em like that anymore!