Interesting post, never even gave the surface temperature a thought on thermal cut out. Don't believe thats the case on gas pumps. Seen some mighty hot cases that weren't kicking out on the internal thermal of fractional EP motors. On Submerged motors, I hope the case doesn't get that hot
but I change sub. motors all the time that are cycling on off because of the thermal.
Might be interesting to use on of those infrared thermometers to check case temps although I'm not sure that gasoline would flash just because the case is over the flash point. The vapors would have to be over the flash point.