What if they leak a little bit? Could that cause major safety issues while test driving?
Some thoughts on this:
1. If the leak is
really little it can be far more dangerous in the garage than driving. Here's why:
My SPF tank had a couple tiny leaks in the welds barely visible to the naked eye; you had to know where to look to see them at all. This allowed gasoline to leak at about one drop every few seconds. Of course these leaks were up high enough that they didn't operate until I put in enough fuel to reach that level. Even then, if I weren't looking in exactly the right place with good light right when a drop fell I would never see it. Gasoline has viscosity
much less than water, so when it forms smaller drops that when they hit a shiny surface immediately spread out so thin they disappear from view (although if you dragged your finger across you would feel and see it).
My floor is plastic (Racedeck) tile over a concrete slab. This went on for several weeks until I finally went on a serious hunt for the gasoline smell in my garage (which wasn't all that strong, especially the car is carbureted).
Around that time I noticed that some of my plastic tiles had visibly warped. That's when I finally realized what was going on: gasoline was dripping very slowly, seeping across the garage floor to the nearest low spot, accumulating there and either soaking into the concrete or evaporated or both.
Any time in that period a source of ignition could have caused the garage to go up in flames.
So I would argue that a very slow leak can be just as dangerous as a fast one.
2. Regarding
fast leaks: Another thing I realized early on is that if I did have a fuel system leak that I discovered after filling the system with gas, I would want a
very fast way to remove the gas from the tanks. For that reason I installed an AN male Tee in my fuel system plumbing just downstream from the pumps, with an AN cap. With that I can quickly remove the cap, connect a hose with matching AN hose end, point the hose into a fuel container and turn on the fuel pumps. This evacuates the tanks in a matter of a few minutes.
3. My car has a Safecraft on-board fire system with nozzles in the passenger and engine compartment and pull handle on the dash. It also has a pair of small extinguishers on the firewall next to the driver and the passenger seats. Finally, whenever I am working on the car I have a 10 lb Halon fire extinguisher in plain site.