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  1. #1 Beijing gas station refueling 
    Danger, Will Robinson! Lao Jia Hou's Avatar
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    Noticed this on a Chinese forum ...



    Prior to being allowed to fill up at some stations, a pic is being taken of your plate & blue book while you are inside registering your driving license (while being recorded by the security camera inside ... "please remove your helmet").

    OK, this is getting ridiculous. Who dreams up these policies / practices?

    There is a guy that lives in my building and rides one of those Turtle things, without plates. He siphons gas out of his car to fill up his bike. All done in the underground parking lot, which is poorly ventilated. Sometimes, the area reeks of gas fumes.

    EDIT: Oh yeah, I wonder if those gas station jockeys can be enticed to sell the plate numbers & bike details (out of the blue book) to the counterfeiting crooks ... 20 rmb per picture? Incredible.
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  2. #2 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
    Senior C-Moto Guru euphonius's Avatar
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    They should hire Booz Allen and automate the whole process so you as the driver won't even know it's happening. Hey, I hear there's a former Booz surveillance guy down in Hong Kong who's probably looking for work right now...

    cheers!
    jkp
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    2010 JH600 "Merkin Muffley" (in Shanghai)
    2000 KLR650 "Feezer Ablanalp" (in California)
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  3. #3 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
    Danger, Will Robinson! Lao Jia Hou's Avatar
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    Hey Mr Euph - just a few hundred meters south of your old homestead, next to the Honda Car dealer, is a gas station that drives me crazy. I need to take my blood pressure meds before I fill up at that station.

    One week, I'm almost strip searched to get gas. Next week, they're pleasant & smiley and quickly fill my tank without so much as a peep or a query. Following week, back to the gestapo tactics. Once, a small group of us (4) came in ... this crazy old lady came running out and told us we had to push our bikes (with the engines off) from the station's driveway entrance up to the pumps. We were already at the pumps but ... no no no ... she wanted us to leave and start over. We were all on large, heavy bikes .. all fully legal ... and a couple worth several hundred thousand rmb. And while this is going on, a POS Xiali sedan sputters up to the pumps and gets a happy fill.

    None of this makes any sense. It certainly has no impact on illegal bikes and/or riders.
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  4. #4 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
    Senior C-Moto Guru ZMC888's Avatar
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    Luckily I don't have these problems. We have the 'fill up in the corner using a dangerous kettle because it's safer' routine. A few stations don't insist on it so I only go to those.
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  5. #5 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
    Duct tape savant felix's Avatar
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    I feel so lucky out here. No license checks, no stupid teapots, just pull up to any station and fill up. They also don't mind filling up jerry cans, which i've been refused in most other parts of china.

    On the other hand the bike ban is enforced pretty strictly. And they don't allow their citizen to even hold E or D licenses.



    Also i have yet to get a fill up without them spilling petrol all over my bike. Sure why would they be able to do their job?
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  6. #6 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
    C-Moto Guru MotoKai's Avatar
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    Milton and I were (no idea where we were but may have been Sichuan) somewhere, and it was one of the stupid teapot provinces and at a station where it was strictly enforced. There were 2 small pots each big enough to make tea for an entire 30 person danwei but no more. Milton got in early getting the "good pot". I got the leaky one. Yeah, leaky one!!

    There I was carrying it from the pump to my bike which of course was parked 30m away against the right hand side of the gas station. The walk to the bike created a stream of gasoline from pump to bike from the leaking pot. When I arrive at the Jialing and tried to get the spout into (or somewhere near) the opening on my gas tank I discovered that too was damaged. Now I have gasoline leaking from not just the bottom but now also the top and now all over my bike and over Motokai. As I was trying to salvage this ever so delicately Milton was my advocate firing at the attendant how in the world this could be safer than filling up at the pump??

    Gasoline everywhere: Ground, Bike, Clothes, Motokai

    Really? This is safer?


    Motokai File Photo: Inner Mongolia

    * The best is when the station which by law must enforces the policy (I get that) actually puts care into their teapots. I appreciate those who attach the Garden Hose to the spout so you can actually pour the gasoline into your tank without risking self-immolation.
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  7. #7 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
    Danger, Will Robinson! Lao Jia Hou's Avatar
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    Seriously, what is the rationale behind the teapots?

    I am going to guess that it is because they think an exposed engine might somehow cause the fuel to ignite/explode? The reason I think this is because once, a long time ago, I filled up my Jeep in some hick-ville outside Harbin ... pulled away from the pump (so others behind me could have their turn) and stopped about 20 meters away ... popped the hood to check my oil ... and the entire cast & crew of Sinopec, filled with terror on their faces, came running out to me, yelling to immediately close my hood.

    Living in China, we get to experience the effects of a country that shut down its education system during the Cultural "Evolution" ... folks that missed years of education (including classes in basic physics) are now the leaders, dreaming up "public safety" policies.

    So, opening your hood (bonnet for you Brits out there) is a dangerous public hazard ... smoking in hospitals, nyeh, no problem.

    EDIT: In one of the Mythbustsrs episodes, they test the theories of gas station fires (e.g., cell phones, etc). They couldn't get it to work - nothing started the fires. Nothing - they had a hell of a time getting anything to start a fire. They even went as far as tossing a lit cigarette into a pail of gas (nothing happened, except the cigarette was extinguished). (linkie)

    There was ONE thing that was shown to be a risk, however ... at self-serve gas stations, static electricity could create a spark and ignite the fuel fumes. Apparently, this happened most with women! Women would leave the car, put the nozzle in to start filling, then hop back inside the car to get their wallet out of their purse ... then get back outside the car and touch the nozzle, right where the fumes were exiting. Rubbing across the driver's seat created static electricity. Men carry their wallets in their pocket, and don't hop in/out of the car, so it was rare. If there was any static electricity when a man first got out, it was grounded when he reached for the nozzle at the pump (before starting to pump). (linkie)

    Anyone want to volunteer to explain the physics to a Chinese gas station?
    Last edited by Lao Jia Hou; 06-20-2013 at 11:51 PM.
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  8. #8 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
    C-Moto Guru milton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MotoKai View Post
    Milton and I were (no idea where we were but may have been Sichuan) somewhere, and it was one of the stupid teapot provinces and at a station where it was strictly enforced.
    Actually I have a few pictures for the occasion described by Motokai:

    Motokai was re-filling his bike, wondering why there wasn’t much ended up in the tank. Note the puddle underneath his bike, which according to Sinopec is less a fire hazard than filling up at the pump:



    Motokai finally gave up and switched to another kettle. Notice how the first teapot splays, side way, at the spout:



    That leaky kettle works better than any of these in the garden:

    Last edited by milton; 06-21-2013 at 02:54 AM.
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  9. #9 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
    C-Moto Not-so-Noob Rewi Alley's Avatar
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    When did this requirement come into being? We have toured through Sichuan (twice) and Yunnan on motorcycles and never had any problem filling multiple motorcycles from one pump (so we could pay one bill). In Laos, they still use 1940s hand-pumps in 44 gallon drums with no problems. As a child, I regularly refulled our farm tractor with a hand-pump (rotary) out of a 500 gallon underground tank. My father once showed us the dangers of petrol by putting some in a wide can and immediately putting a match in it. It went out. Then he struck another match a minute or so later (when there were plenty of fumes above the fuel) and toosed teh match in. The vapour immediately erupted. We tried this with kerosine and diesel so we could see the difference. That's when we learned about 'volatility'. Don't they teach this stuff in the People's Republic?
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  10. #10 Re: Beijing gas station refueling 
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    Jeezus, that looks like the set up for a dramatic explosion in a bad action movie.
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