The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Newcomers → Fuel transport. Minor existential crisis - one week before first race.
My team is having a Minor existential crisis - one week before the first race - concerning transporting fuel to the track . What is the easiest method. 5 gallon cans from wall mart. 55 gallon drum from Craigslist. Please give me some knowledge i can take back to my distraught team.
For us, I gather up as many 5 gallon cans as I can find. This results in having to transfer fuel from the generic lawn mower cans to the dump cans, which is a bit of a PITA. A 55 gallon drum with a hand pump would be nice, but certainly not without it's own issues.
IF you can get a "fuel safe" drum that's in good condition then that's the way to go. There are no legal issues transporting such a container since you only have to post "hazmat" placards if you're carrying more then 110 gallons. So you can carry as many as two drums.
It's best to just fill the drums at a station near the track rather then transport full drums.
Only at High Plains can this be a problem as the nearest station is some 30 miles away and the track only carries "racing fuel" at $9.90 a gallon!
For us, I gather up as many 5 gallon cans as I can find. This results in having to transfer fuel from the generic lawn mower cans to the dump cans, which is a bit of a PITA. A 55 gallon drum with a hand pump would be nice, but certainly not without it's own issues.
Actually, the siphon pump ins the bomb! Three pumps to get the siphon going and then just wait.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AP … &psc=1
I had to lengthen the discharge tube using a generic dishwasher discharge hose (cut to legth) available at any big box store but this is what it looks like on Amazon.
What are you using for dump cans at the track?
We have 6 of the Jegs 5 gallon plastic jugs:
https://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS/555/80211/10002/-1
We fill these before we leave for the track and we have a special home-made rack on the front of the trailer where we carry them.
Then we have 2 of the filler caps with the built-in hose:
https://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS/555/80215/10002/-1
So, we just attach the filler caps to the 2 jugs that we will be using for fueling (all the tracks we go to have hot-pit fueling). After those 2 are empty, you just need to swap caps to another full can. I know that these don't empty as fast as some others like the Hunsakers, but at $22 each, the Jegs cans are cheap and its so much easier/cleaner to just swap the caps as opposed to transferring the fuel from one container to another. One less thing to go wrong. With 6 jugs, we can easily get through an entire day and just have to re-fill the empties on Saturday night - assuming that we are actually burning gas all day Saturday - not a foregone conclusion with us.
We to use a a hand full jegs jugs with a few caps set up with hoses and one Hunsakers . If we break we just use it in the mobile home to drive back. We are very good at doing hot pit fills on the mobile home.
If your race is a week away, then it's at MSR and you probably got the email saying the track isn't allowing large drums of fuel to be brought onsite.
My team does the same thing as Ross2004. We have six 5-gallon race jugs for fueling the car and another five or six random 5ish gallon lawnmower jugs. One team member makes a fuel run on Friday and fills them all up, then we refill the race jugs with the regular jugs as they get emptied. At some point someone makes another fuel run and fills all the jugs again.
That being said, refilling at the track pumps is slow and expensive (~$5/gallon for 93 octane IIRC), but it does remove a lot of hassle for a newbie team that's already got too much to worry about.
There's a 24 hour Shell station 5 minutes from the track. My team has about a dozen 5 gallon cans between our Hunsaskers and generic homeowner cans (plus what's in the car). If we somehow stay on the track, someone will have to make the trek to refill. Not a big deal for us.
(Actually, it would be a HUGE deal for us. We've never managed to keep the car running that long!)
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