Gas tank cover, automatic door lock, ouch

[billydsz]

I had an interesting thing happen to me yesterday. I filled the gas tank on my Z, tightened the cap and closed the outer lid. Then I coasted my Z into a touchless automatic carwash at the station, punched in the carwash code and coasted in. After the mechanism of the carwash circled around twice, on the third pass I heard a loud clunk. I couldn't tell what had happened and I had to sit and wait until the car wash finished to see what the clunk was. Long story short the touchless carwash pipe ripped off my gas tank lid. After thinking about it, this is what I think happened.

Because I never manually locked the car doors, and never got the car over 10mph (coasting from the pump into the car wash), the doors were never locked after closing the lid. Then the vibration from the powerful jets of the touchless car wash popped open the lid. Finally during a pass the mechanism of the car wash ripped off the lid.

So be sure your doors are locked when you enter one of these....

Fortunately the damage was limited to the lid itself, the body was untouched. So a new lid, paint the lid to match and installation, less than $300. Could have been alot worse.