Muffler clamp popped holes in my son in laws gas tank.

We were down in Moab over the weekend and my son in law's 95 Cherokee suffered a "snake bite" puncture to his gas tank when he went off a steep ledge and the tail pipe got shoved over causing the rear muffler clamp to hit the tank. The clamp was attached so that the bottom half of the clamp had its sharp corners next to the tank. The sharp corners caused the puncture. I would suggest that people check the orientation of the rear clamp and rotate the clamp so that the sharp corners are away from the tank. The position that is bad is the easiest position to tighten the clamp bolts so many may be set like his was. We were 50+ miles away from help at the time and losing gas quickly and since his tank was low anyway we thought we were going to have to send someone home to get one of my spare tanks. However I remembered something I read on the net and tried it. I got a bar of hand soap and worked chunks of the soap into the puncture and sure enough the soap stopped the leaks. To protect it further I put duct tape over the patch to keep water off. We hoped the patch would work long enough to get him into town but it never leaked a drop and we were able to get him all the way home. I don't think we could have found parts that late on a Saturday night anyway. I now plan on adding a bar of soap to the duct tape and bailing wire in the tool box.
Dave

Hmmm, my factory skid plate on my 98XJ covers both sides of the tank from that clamp. What kind of skid plate does he have ???

He has the plastic stock tank cover which doesn't cover the sides. He wants a real skid plate now.
Dave

Wow, glad you guys made it home and that's a nice trick w/ the soap. I have the same orientation w/ my new clamp. It broke a few weeks back and took it to my muffler guy who put one on in the smae place, but I noticed that the bolt and the nut are now sitting on top of the edge of the plastic. I was gonna cut some of the plastic away( thinking it's transmitting all those exhaust vibrations to my tank) but now I'll really look into it. Can you just flip it?

On my clamp I just loosened it up and rotated it 90 degrees so that the bolts stick out away from the tank.
Dave

DaveB said:

On my clamp I just loosened it up and rotated it 90 degrees so that the bolts stick out away from the tank.
Dave

Click to expand...

Good deal. Thanks

We swapped out the bad tank last night and also fixed the tailpipe. I looked at mine also and the muffler guys rotated my clamp back down, however I have a smaller tailpipe and my clamp also has slanted sides so that it would be hard for them to puncture the tank. I noticed that you may not be able to rotate the clamp a full 90 degrees since the clamp may interfere with the springs. My son in law's jeep has a cat back system on it with large tail pipe which puts his clamp close to the tank and the springs. We were able to rotate the clamp a bit and used a clamp which didn't have sharp corners so he should be good to go now.
Dave