Two hundred miles from home, five miles off the highway in a very small residential community out in the boondocks, on a gravel road, at 8 in the morning on a Saturday,
I found a garage sale.
Bigger than shit, about two hundred yards down the street from my brother’s vacation house.
The guy was just setting up and I found these.
Ten bucks apiece, I almost sprained my wrist trying to dig the money out of my pocket so fast.
One even came with a quality spout.
IF you can find them anymore, people are wanting fifty dollars each for these old gas cans around here anymore.
So yeah, ten bucks each?
Until the bottom rusts out… don’t let EPA or the safety nazi know you have pre-idiot proof gas containers and spout…
The EPA can go piss up a rope.
Great score !!!
Nice Score, did you get some more for the other kiddies? Hump the e.p.a.
have 2 of them myself. first clean them out. if need be. use acid to get any rust out of them. then use a metal wash, like paint prep. then either use a tank sealer or something like it. then put gas in them. and some stabil to it
when you need to use said gas, USE a filter before putting it in anything you want to keep. ask me how I know this,,,
plastic gas cans are okay for the most part, but those old metal cans will last a lot longer than any plastic can ever will. if you take care of them.
Dynomite score Phil! I had a devil of a time finding the flex metal pour spouts for mine, until I came across them at a mil surplus store. They had three and I grabbed all three. I also managed to find replacement rubber gaskets for the lids online too. Not about to let mine get away. I recycle the gas at least once a year, and spring for the moonshine free expensive stuff.
https://colemans.com/german-military-large-mouth-gerry-can
https://colemans.com/nato-flexible-large-mouth-nozzle
Buy me some buddy! Keep one for yourself, see how generous I am?
Aren’t you the sweetest thing…..
Great find Phil, in a most out of the way place. You must have a horseshoe up your ass. Can I borrow the horseshoe? Cause I’m straight outta luck recently.
Glad you and yours had a safe trip.
Your road trip reminds me of Ricky Bobby, “I wanna go fast”. 😂
The hard part when it comes to those older jerry cans is finding the gaskets for them. Used to be easy to find. Not so much now.
I use sheet cork.
Old tire tubes make great gaskets… find your local small airplane repair shop; small bugmashers still use tubes in their tires.
True that. And any A&P mechanic worth his stuff will use a new tube with every tire change, so the discard tubes will be in good shape. We grew up with a logger neighbor, and truck tubes were great for floating the rivers. It took three at a time–one for you, one for your girl, and one for the beer cooler.
RE: the old GI 5 gallon cans – the spouts are what’s really hard to find.
I’m always on the lookout for the old vacuum coffee makers in stainless; the top section makes the absolute best funnel, and a chamois draped partially into it makes an excellent fuel filter.
Great find. I keep an eye out for jerry cans as well. Good for diesel and easy to spray them yellow (or just paint the word on the side).
The first time the US government fucked up a gas can.
The Kraut can it was copied from had a much better spout design.
I haven’t used a spout on a 5 gallon can since I found the Super Siphon.
https://safetysiphon.net/
Way easier.
Had one of these fastened to the back of my CJ-5 back around 1979. The expansion/contraction that it goes through will eventually cause corrosion stress cracking in the sidewall X and they’ll leak.
If you keep them inside in the dark all the time, they may last longer.
The newer Mil-Spec Fuel and Water Cans are Heavy, High-Density Polyethylene, and don’t Rust or Crack. They are made in Canada, and a little hard to Find as “Surplus” here. I had Steel Cans for 20 Years, a lot of them, but when the Plastic ones came out, I changed over as the Rust got rid of the older ones. New ones have been running $50 or so, anybody paying that for a Rusted Steel Can is throwing money away.