I drive with the insurance of a 1 gallon, spare can.

Bob Wilson

 

Everyone out there who fell on their sword, so to speak, to establish what happens to your Prius when you run the darn thing dry - Thanks.

You remind me of people who walk around boasting of what this or that supplement does for them, in effect offering your bodies for science - thanks for offering your 20,000.00+ pride-and joy for the rest of us.

Boy, when I see that blinking final gas pip blinking, I'm heading (or looking) for the next station.

 

I have pretty good track of the last 10 tanks or so.

Based on gallons filled, and theoretical gallons remaining to get to 11.9 gallons in a full tank, I can consistently get 100 miles between when it starts flashing and empty.

Before I started monitoring closely, I ran out of gas right at 100 miles.

Randall

 

Hi all -

Last three fillups: I filled up within yards of the 'flashing last pip' coming on.

I put in -
10.763
10.745
10.829 (actually - about 5 miles past 'first blink')

Specs say 11.9 gals total - so I had about 1 gallon left each time.

I'd say that last 'pip' is telling you you have about 30-40 miles left to empty.

Bill in Milton-Freewater

 

If it is illegal to carry a gas can in your car, how do you get gas to your house to run in the lawn mower, weed eater, edger, generator, etc...

I have a 100 gallon diesel tank in the bed of my truck, do you think that is dangerous too?

If you get hit hard enough to compromise the trunk enough to rupture a fuel can in there, you probably have more things to worry about. Like if your body can withstand the g-forces created when you were struck that hard.

 

Actually it is illegal. Back in the day people used to walk to the gas station to fill up their gas cans and walk it back. Now a days people drive everywhere, even to their mail box.

 

I thought it was "unhealthy" to run on low fuel because your using the nasty crap that settles to the bottom of the tank. I tend to fuel up when 1 or 2 bars are left.

 

When you stop to think this through, the "crap in the bottom of the tank" idea is illogical in so many ways. You see it everywhere, though -- everybody seems to believe it -- so I just want to have a little fun with it.

First, where is the fuel pickup in the tank? It's either at the lowest point, in which case it's *always* sucking up whatever crap is in the bottom of the tank, no matter how full the tank is -- so running your car out of gas doesn't raise your risk of sucking up the crap at the bottom of the tank, because you're doing it all the time anyway;

Or, the pickup is slightly above the lowest point in the tank, which would allow for the "settling" posed by this "gas-crap" theory. But in this case, your car will run out of gas *before* reaching the gas with all that settled-out-crap in it. So running your car out of gas doesn't even allow you to suck up all that crap at the bottom of the tank.

But let's think it through one step further, because this entire notion of "settling" makes no sense: Pay attention to the dynamics of your moving car and fuel sloshing in a partially full tank: do you really believe anything in the tank can settle at all when the car is moving? No more than ice can "settle" in your cocktail when you swirl it. So all that crap in your tank isn't "settling" to begin with (except for when you park the car and shut it off. But we're talking about running out of gas here, right, so presumably the car wasn't parked when you did); it's in suspension in the fuel itself. So running your car out of gas doesn't increase the risk of sucking up all that crap at the bottom of the tank because it's not at the bottom of the tank.

But wait. Who said there's all this crap in the gas to begin with?
1. Fuel filters these days are routinely run 100,000+ miles without changing. I had one car go 150,000 without change (and that's just when I sold the car). If there was all this crap in our gas, there's no way filters would ever last this long -- and there's no way manufacturers could get away with building them into places where they can't be a routine service item.

2. How is it that when wise people avoid sucking into their engines all this crap that's in their tanks by never driving the tank to empty, the tank never fills up with crap? I mean, think about it: if you put crap in your tank every time you fill up, and carefully avoid taking any of the crap out, how on earth is your tank not half full of crap by the time you've gone 100,000 miles? Wouldn't we notice this? Maybe it's *magically disappearing* crap! Where oh where does it all go?

Easiest answer: it was mostly never there to start with, and what was there is being trapped by the filter *all the time*, not just when you drive the tank to empty, because it's *in suspension* in the fuel whenever the car is moving and thus always being sucked up, but there's so **** little of it that it just makes no difference.

In short (since I haven't been yet) I don't think we need to worry about driving our tanks to empty on the basis of this particular urban legend.

cheers --
doug

 

hmmmm good point

 

That's funny because just yesterday I filled up after driving back and forth to work with a flashing pip and only put 9.4gal in. This is only the second time I've driven for a while with a flashing pip because all the talk makes me nervous about running out of gas. But from my experience, even after 30 miles of driving with the pip flashing, I can only add a little over 9 gallons... hmmmm.