Yep Taboo is the same way, routed into the trunk. Its cool and a pain as all the local pumps now have those rubber boots and are hi flow so its pretty much a 5 gallon can at a time at home if you want to drive it and then get out of the city to find bootless pumps.
The boss looks like he has most of the cool ones covered. That custom fuel door on the 55 is neato!! Let's see some more.
I was cleaning up in the shop and found a fuel door and fender section I saved from a 911 Porsche. I was in my 20s when I saved this piece from a car I fixed in case I wanted a clean filler door. As I’ve gotten older, those visual lumps and bumps from the cab mounted gas tanks bother me less and less. That hinge mechanism could be used on a tail light though....... hmmmmmm on a side note, we went from a gas filler in plain sight to hiding them behind doors. Then we shaved the doors and hid em in trunks or beds. We’re setting up a filler in the bed of a truck at school now. A student asked why we shaved the gas door. I didn’t really know how to answer that.
Another cool feature of 50's cars! The cap behind the rear license plate made a ton of sense, prior to long reach pump hoses as most cars had the filler on the drivers side. People would line up on one side of the island vs. driving around to the other side. Working in a service station during High School in the mid 70's I knew which 60's/70's cars had plate caps and would wave full service customers into both sides of the island to get them pitted. There's a co. that makes a motorized 55 Chevy taillight kit. Kindigit did a 52 Pontiac build where they bonded the stock quarter panel emblem to a hidden flush mount gas cap. It's spring loaded, so a push on the emblem pops it out, then you unthread the cap. Pretty cool.
I loved trying to find where they were hidden when I was a kid. I would walk over and flip them open. The owners were probably not impressed.
I remember those. I was a freshly-minted college dropout in January of 1964. My new job was a "Pump Jockey and general flunky" at the full service corner gas station. Fortunately, I was a gear-head, so the learning curve was shallow. Some observations from that job: 1. Not only was the gas filler hidden, finding the hood latch was a challenge. 2. I did manage to learn about jump starting Positive-ground Fords (and did not let the smoke out!). 3. New England winters can get extremely cold - My hands never totally recovered from that frostbite... 4. Minimum wage jobs (54 hours/week - not eligible for overtime) are not very fun (Work is a 4-letter word). 5. Occasionally, something cool would show up, such as an air-cooled Franklin, or an old Dodge cattle truck. Amd lots of retired folks that actually needed your best full service efforts. 6. And weird stuff, like the guy with the VW beetle that wanted a receipt for 20 Gallons of gas. 7. Or the 409 Chevy. The teen aged son would come in on Saturday morning and have me turn up the idle. Then the father would come in on Monday - All pissed off - and have us turn the idle back down. Found out the station owner had ZERO mechanical knowledge (he was unscrewing the pivot screw on the choke linkage...). EDIT: Those GM behind-the-license-plate fillers would sometimes slosh out some gas as the driver accelerated away from the pump. Russ
I don’t like looking at a car and seeing a gas door on the side of the fender it kind of takes away the flow of the lines. With the pop out caps you don’t have to open the trunk and they look good as long as they are same color as the car. Just my opinion
I've been trying to think of a way to hide one in a pickup. I have pondered having one of the wood planks hinge.
This just popped up by coincidence on a Tri-Five forum. No explanation as to why other than it was built in France???
You could do like I did on my 54 and run a hose from the tank up inside the fender ABOVE the filler neck and add a vent. I used one of these from TanksInc and tack welded a brake hose bracket to hold it.
I'd have to say that a lot were/are. I've seen some with a sealed box around them with a lid that seals, One in particular has a steel ammo can around it that you pop the lid on to get to the gas filler. That thing took up a lot of room but had a good drain tube that also worked as a vent for the box. The owner said that he had spilled gas in the trunk when he first had the car on the road and the ammo can was sitting on the shelf in his garage when he started thinking about how to fix the problem. Those 56 Chevy flipping tail lights always seem to be too attractive for old fart non car guys at shows. They always seem to want to pop them open to show their buddy how they work on cars that don't belong to them. I saw one get broken at a show that way years ago and the old dude was lucky he survived the fit the owner threw after he broke it and all that ended up happening to him was that he was escorted to the gate and kicked out and told not to come back.
It's interesting to me that Detroit worked so hard to hide the fuel filler for over a decade... and then at one point in the 1960's or so, they were just like, "fuck it" and the fuel door became the norm even on Cadillacs...
I realize this is probably pushing the genre here but I thought I'd show a seldom done, as in I've never seen another "custom" fuel filler like the one I did on my Suburban. Wasn't planned but when I discovered the carnage from an old repair I replaced the quarter panel with the pickup version. I put a cable operated tailgate release in there when I shaved the handle, I also filled the license plate cove.
Hey DDDenny, cool set-up. But I gotta ask. Hidden gas filler with a locking gas cap. "Just where the hell are you parking the Burb? "
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