Fuelling vintage cars a unique process

Our grandparents did not have the option of electronic pumps supplying the exact amount of litres of fuel required.

Fuel used to be sold by the gallon (3,7l), and French Satam pumps, which were used from around the 1930s, only dispensed petrol by the gallon.

One such pump, which is still in working order, is on display at the Old Wheelers museum at Olympia.

Owner and vintage car enthusiast Peter Breitenstein says he found the pump on a farm, and after buying and restoring it, donated it to the museum.

Manufactured in around 1929 by Satam, this pump was used by garages worldwide.

Breitenstein says these pumps were most likely still used in the late fifties.

This particular Shell-branded pump was connected to an underground reservoir (tanks) from which the fuel was drawn up and one of the two glass cylinders was filled.

When full, it was switched to a glass cylinder, he says.

Another one would drain the petrol into a vehicle’s fuel tank.

“One of the drawbacks was that the glass container would drain all the fuel into the tank, irrespective of whether there was sufficient capacity, and this could not be stopped,” Breitenstein says.

The petrol attendant, which back then was also the owner and most likely the mechanic of a petrol station, set the dial manually to the amount of gallons a motorist wanted.

Then by hand he pumped the fuel from the submerged tank into one of the two cylinders.

Once the cylinder was filled to capacity, a distinctive click was sounded, and the second cylinder then started to fill up, while the fist cylinder dispersed the fuel into a vehicle’s tank.

The pump could supply up to 10 gallons at a time.

Breitenstein recalls that a trip from Stellenbosch to Windhoek only cost N$11,60 – almost half of what one liter of petrol cost today.

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