How NOT to operate a carburetor style car

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http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/east_king/b ... 38254.html

So, they filled a bucket with gasoline, and were transferring gas from the bucket directly to the carburetor of the engine via an old water bottle. (For those unfamiliar with old style American vans, the V-8 engine sits partially under a small hood, and partially inside the passenger compartment. A plastic cover protects the passengers from the engine, and vice versa. This cover is easy to unscrew and remove.) The van stalled, and when they went to restart it, the fumes ignited. Kaboom. All three are in the hospital, with severe burns. Bellevue, Washington, is a suburb of Seattle.

There are so many things wrong with that (and I've seen it on jalopnik before today)

#1 - liquid gasoline does NOT burn, they were lucky they didn't hydrolock the engine by dumping gas in
#2 - you don't need a BUCKET of gas to start a car, you probably need at most a FIFTH of a gallon
#3 - you don't leave a bucket of gasoline in the back of your car to evaporate and fill your cabin with VERY dangerous and combustible fumes
#4 - why couldn't they buy starting fluid? most gas stations carry it

Starting fluid will do a whole lot better than dumping fuel down into the engine. If they had hydrolocked it it wouldn't have started...or at least made a significant number of rotations. Back to dumping fuel...if you run more than about an 11:1 AFR you're at SERIOUS risk of getting unburnt fuel past the piston rings and into the oil sump, then this diluted oil is the only thing stopping your main bearings and cylinder walls from getting torn the hell up (especially if you're a cheap SOB like these geniuses probably were and you don't change your oil ever).

Starting fluid would not have been of any good use here. This is a situation where an engine had no regular fuel supply -- possibly a bad fuel pump -- so people were slowly pouring fuel into the top of the engine to keep it running as they drove ... and then when the engine stalled for some reason, it backfired and flashed the fumes in the air when they tried to re-start it.

Very bad idea.

Fuel pump gave out on our van while on holiday once so we rigged up a gravity feed from a big coke bottle filled with petrol to the carb using tubing from the windscreen washer, worked fine and was moderately safe

Now that's cooking with gas...