Alrighty, story time.

I've got a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder. It's basically falling apart, but there's this race that my sister's boyfriend told me about, where a bunch of people race their old beat up crapyp cars in a field, at a whopping 15 or 20 miles per hour, Crashing is encouraged, and everyone has a good time.

Now, my pathfinder ran fine, except it was so rusty that the back end is basically falling off... the frame and the body are separating. We're going to fasten them/weld/find some way to get that taken care of.

The problem is with the gas tank. Since it's separated, and laying a little lower than it should, when we took ti for a joyride in the cornfield, the rusty fuel line started leaking... really bad. We cut the gas tank off, got some rubber fuel line hose (for a whopping $3), and a few clips. The two main gas lines now run up through a hole in the floor in the back of the pathfinder, where the new hoses attach to the gas tank, which is just sitting back there. We also pulled the electrical line that runs the fuel pump up into the inside (it already ran through the back of the vehicle to get over to the tank, so we just pulled it back.) We drove it out of the garage, since it stays outside, and it actually runs quite well with the tank back there.

My questions are these:
For the vent line, is it air intake? Do we need to run that one outside also, and would it be a problem to just run a small hose down out of the body, and let it hang there?

Would it be difficult to get a plastic tank of some sort and use that? How hard is it to get a fuel pump set up in a plastic tank?

I'm not too crazy about having the metal tank in the back, but it would definitely be safer back there than it would be underneath, where everything is so rusty that it might just fall out... and we're going to fasten it down pretty well, as we left all the hooks in the floor in the back that are normally used to tie things down.

Also, there's about a foot behind the radiator and fan, which we could move back to try to keep out of the way from getting smashed, so I have a better chance of winnng the race (it's $10 entry, winner takes all, heh). I think we're going to move it back, and put some type of protection in front of it so it's a lot harder to damage. Any tips on that?

Thanks! :)