Rain is rolling into the east coast today. I was homeward bound just before the leading edge of it was about to come across, and there had already been a few spits of rain but for the most part it was still holding off. . I was tooling up the interstate and a few drops again started to land on the windshield and I wondered if I'd get home before it arrived for real. The drops were quite small, and as the wind blew them up the windshield I noticed that they left odd-looking trails that didn't look quite right. . Then I started to smell something like gasoline. . It didn't take too long to realize that the minivan going somewhat slowly ahead of me was apparently leaking gas, and the droplets were flying out behind it in a suspended cloud. I kicked the wipers once, and they left a big greasy smear behind instead of cleaning the windshield off like they would had it been water. That sort of confired what was going on. . I kicked 'er up to 3 grand and got *past* this rolling disaster before it did something like, oh, I don't know, catch fire. It wasn't a really obvious leak, i.e. I couldn't see anything dripping onto the road and couldn't tell which end of the minivan it was coming from as I went by it. . I sniffed around carefully under my hood after getting home to confirm that it wasn't *my* fuel system. The front of the car still smells like gas and feels sort of greasy, and hopefully it'll vaporize off over the next couple of days. Maybe the rain will help. . That minivan is probably producing more HC emissions than the Prius will give off over its entire lifetime... . _H*
Try living in Oklahoma, Our state did away with vehicle inspections several years ago. Now we have alot of cars with permanent smoke screens built in, and lots of other rolling road hazards. I went out to the parking lot at work the other day because one of my coworkers wanted to show me the claybar/wax job he just spent all weekend doing on his BMW. As we were commenting on how smooth the paint was, he noticed some tiny drops of oil all over his hood and roof of the car. probably got behind one of these idiots. YUCK!
Would that situation fall into the "should warn other driver about dangerous condition of his vehicle" category? Not sure how you'd do that, though.
If the minivan is OBD 2, (newer than 95) the driver should already have a Check Engine Soon light lit because it would fail the Evap Leak test. However, a lot of drivers ignore these warnings. I have passed many cars over the years with RED warning lights lit on the dash, which usuallly means a brake malfunction or similar. I try to pass quickly and stay away from these vehicles for my own safety.
I was actually contemplating which of the two scenarios would be worse for the environment: a) the minivan self-immolates and burns to the ground now, or b) it continues to spew gasoline vapor until it dies a natural death from some other mechanical failure I honestly can't decide which would be worse.
I can beat your story. Several years ago I was driving behind a truck and a 5 gallon bucket of oil fell off the back, took a bounce, then landed directly on my windshield. I almost ran off the road as I couldn't see where I was going. Windshield wipers of course did nothing. I couldn't follow/chase down the vehicle as I had to pull over to try to get my windshield clear. Mike
Hi Hobbit, Too bad, there was not some centrifugal way to pull that gas out of the mist, and run it into the engine. I was in a friends van behind an 18 Wheeler around midnite, and we started to get the thick diesel droplets on the wind-shield. Luckily we had a CB, and called him. He had left his cap off at the refueling stop. He probably would not have made it to Chicago without us alerting him.
Something interesting happened on my way home today: The infiniti in front of me demonstrated it's 0-60+ capabilities on the steep uphill section of route 2 (a part at which you can often smell people's cars burning), and a cloud of greasy gray liquid came spewing out of the exhaust all over my windshield, and a hellacious odor filled the car even though the vent fan was off. I don't know enough about cars to know exactly what liquid this was and why this relatively new (and expensive) car was spewing it so, but I somehow doubt this is normal...
Rapid flicking of the high beams? From a respectful distance, so it's not misinterpreted as "get out of the way"? I managed to flag down a lady that had something flapping from one of her rear wheels a couple of weeks ago doing that. Unfortunately sometimes it doesn't work or people are afraid to respond, as this poor fella found out. . _H*
Throw a lighted cigarette out the window, they'll never hurt the environment or waste gas again! O wait, I don't smoke...
Pull up next to them and wave? People have speculated that there was a danger of explosion; doesn't that warrant a neighborly warning?
