My Toyota Tercel is a great car considering it's 11 years old. I've had to do nearly nothing to it other than routine maintenance. But last week I started to smell gasoline while driving, and then I noticed that it would leak for a little while after shutting off the ignition, and a few spots of gasoline would pool under the parked car. At first I assumed that there was either a small leak in the top of the tank or else the fuel tank's filler tube was broken -- either of which would cause gasoline to slosh out while driving. When I got under the car, I could see that the leaks were distributed as if they were coming from the top of the tank, but the filler tube was dry. Not wanting to pull the tank if I could help it, I decided to rule out a leaky fuel pump as a possible cause. So I started up the car, and let it run. Sure enough first there was a dribble, then a small but steady stream of gasoline. I shut the ignition off, and it stopped.

I checked around on the Internet and learned that the fuel pump is actually inside the gas tank, and is accessible by pulling the back seat, and removing the metal access cover, revealing what's shown here:

With the cover removed, I started the car again, and looked inside the opening. Immediately I was greeted by a steady mist of pressurized gasoline in the area you can't see (where the lines run underneath the car floor). The main fuel line (removed in the above picture, but you can see the threaded metal fitting) was leaking badly, and spraying all over the place.

The line is made of plastic melded to a threaded metal fitting at each end, and I assumed that the leak was a product of age-related fatigue in the plastic-metal union.

"%$*&# built-in obsolescence!" I exclaimed to myself.

Wrong!

When I got the line out, I could see that there was fraying along the side, so I looked underneath the floor area again, to see whether there were any sharp edges which might have rubbed holes in the line. Nothing. I had noticed that the insulation was missing from two of the wires feeding the fuel pump, so I looked more closely at the line.

The cause, it turned out, was gnawing of the plastic by rodents -- probably mice. If you look closely, you can see the characteristic incisor marks:

These little beasts are responsible for more damage than most people realize:

Structural damage caused by rodents can be expensive. In recent years the trend toward use of insulated confinement facilities to raise swine and poultry, for instance, has led to increased rodent damage. Mice are very destructive to rigid foam, fibreglass batt and other types of insulation in walls and attics of such structures.

Mice also gnaw wooden structures causing grain and feed to be wasted. They also undermine buildings by burrowing, which eventually causes structural failure and collapse.

Electrical wiring gnawed by mice causes many fires each year, listed a "cause unknown".

It's funny, and I'm glad I figured this out before the gnawed wires sparked the misting gasoline under there. (One big whoosh! ...and Classical Values might have succumbed -- to an explosive gasoline fire, "cause unknown"!)

(Come to think of it, I'm also glad I'm a non-smoker...)