Tank Explosion in car photos

[Wendy]

I don't know if you guys have seen this before, but it is. Wow!

http://www.diveshop-pr.com/pages.dir/explosion.html

 

[Pez de Diablo]

Man, that guy is going to need a new paint job.

Note to self: bring in tanks for visual inspection.

 

[SueMermaid]

Wow. :wacko: That's amazing that nobody was hurt. It's a very good demonstration as to why we need to have our tanks inspected regularly. Sheesh!

¡¡ No !! no es una lata de sardinas.

:lol: But it sure looks that way, doesn't it?

Edit: That tank looks awfully flimsy compared to the tanks I have seen in cross-section. Is this a really old tank?

 

[runvus4]

Wow, don't know if it was the result of the rupture or the cause (I would suspect the latter), but it looks a bit brown and crusty inside that tank from the third photo from the bottom.

 

[jonnythan]

The site says the tank is steel, and the walls do look thin, but the bottom of the tank looks like it was squared off the way an Al tank is. Do they actually make steel tanks like that? What gives?

 

[jonnythan]

SueMermaid once bubbled...
Edit: That tank looks awfully flimsy compared to the tanks I have seen in cross-section. Is this a really old tank?

Steel tanks have walls that are much thinner than aluminum tanks. After only having seen an Al tank that failed visual and was cut in half, I was very surprised when I saw a steel tank that had met the same fate.

 

[FredT]

appears to epoxy coated over galvanizing. I'd guess the vintage as mid 60s to late 70s from the coating and valve. Current Vip rules require removal of the external epoxy before visual. This is more than a little PITA so most VIP technitions would simply refuse to do it until the customer removed the coating. That vintage tank also commonly had an internal epoxy coating, making internal damage hard to see. Once damaged the internal coating is an accident waitng to happen unless it is totally removed. USD used a light blue coating that is effectively impossible to remove for a few years in that time frame. That may be what we are seeing in the third from last photo.

Apparent failure is from corrosion under the internal or external base coating on a tank habitually stored vertical, or under a boot. The flat appearance of the base of the tank looks like it was flattened in a secondary impact (say by a tree?).


A properly done visual would have caught the defect before it took out the car. I didn't see anything my very poor spanish would flag as a discussion of a burst disk. Many places in the world outside the US don't use them.

FT

 

[scubafanatic]

.......I'm still wondering how this tank managed to rocket it's way BACKWARD into that tree!!! ???

 

[FredT]

Tank would be spinning like a mother!

FT

 

[pescador775]

Previously, I've warned on the tank board concerning the US Divers tanks produced in the mid to late 60's. These are externally painted over bare metal, no galvo. There is no internal coating in these tanks. What you are seeing is boot damage. I've seen many of these tanks in Mexico during my trips to that country in the 70's. All were rusty and dangerous looking after only a few years service. One was brought to me for filling in 1998. I removed the boot whereby the old paint plus a double handful of rust came off with it. The tank was carried to a junk yard.