Cutting it Close
 

I'm the type of driver that waits until the little yellow light comes on and says that I need gas. I'm rarely further than a couple miles from a gas station so I just wait. (Save yourself the time and energy of flaming. I've been told reasons why I shouldn't wait for almost 10 years and I haven't changed yet.)

I went to get gas today at lunch and I'm watching the gauge. 11 ... 12 ... 13 ... (here's where it usually stops) ... 14 ... 15... :eek: 15.044 gallons!!! I looked up the size of the tank to verify what I thought and sure enough, I had less than one gallon left of gas!!

Now in my mind, this is actually a good thing. I've secretly always wanted to see how far I could go on one tank of gas without actually running out. I think this is a new record. :D

I don't know exactly how many miles I had driven since my light came on (I had to disconnect the battery for a mod last night), but if I had to guess, I'd say around 25.

Happy Zoom-Zooming!!!

It's a bothersome having to refill once a week, but the most I've had to fill thus far was 13.8 gals. I don't know if I could ever try for 15.

tasty.

I start getting anxiety attacks whenever I see the light come on.

Now you will push it more often. I predict you will run out of gas soon :)

mines yellow right now and the needle is half way over the "E".

^^ That's pretty much how I know I NEED gas. Just the light is fine. I have about 2 gallons left at that point, but when it's PAST "E," and looks like it's about to fall off, time to filler-up!

One of the Calgary guys did a 58 L fill on a 60 L tank...now that's impressive!

I'm a wimp and have only done 53.

lol... i fill up about 3 times in a week. But my needle usually doesn't drop below the quarter tank mark :)

Isn't it better to wait until the tank is nearly empty...then you're not using old gas? I think I heard this somewhere.

funny story about running out of gas

so my family and i were driving to denver this christmas. Well about 2 hours from denver there isnt a thing in site, so i was running low on gas and we passed a few gas stations becuase we wanted to eat also. So i started to get a little worried and my dad was like it will be fine so finally i say ah its not getting gas!!! Luckly as i say that a exit comes up over the hill i coast into the exit down the hill go through a red light to get into the gas station across the highway and stop at the pump. So freaking luckly i could have ended up 20 miles from anything in the middle of the night.

lol! nice recovery...

isn't that bad for your engine though?

ah it was my parents van

If you're filling up once a week, the gas is never getting old. I've pumped 14.8 gallons once, but most of the time when the light comes on, I head to the nearest Arco.

Yeah but what if you fill up when it reaches half-way every time? Then even years down the road there should be at least a little bit of gas from your FIRST fill-up in there...

It doesn't hurt a gas engine to run it dry. Diesel's on the other hand are pretty hard to start after running out of fuel.

yeah...I don't think so...lol

Just think about it...the new gas gets mixed up with the old gas whenever you fill up. If you never completely empty out the gas tank there'll always be some old gas in there.

I'm just sayin'! :)

I didn't know that...ya learn something new every day!

True. But. After say a half dozen half-tank fillups the percentage of gas from the first tank full is very small I would think. (Somebody do the math. :) )

However, there is another consideration. The more frequently you fill the tank, the higher the probability that you will get bad gas. So better to use up most of each tank and limit the number of fillups.

I think 15.3 gallons is my largest at-once fillup in the 8 :D

I think I would worry more about half the oil in your engine getting left in at each oil change.... :p

it wont hurt the motor to run the gas tank d own to E, but what will happen is that you will end up clogging up the fuel filter and injectors much more quickly as you are not only pulling gas through the system, but also picking up more sediment the lower your gas level falls

^ interesting...

So more sediments get into your engine the less gas you have in your tank? That can't be good, eh?

Sounds like there's pros and cons to filling up earlier or later...

another good thing to do is to fill up in the morning, the earlier the better, cause when the sun comes up, the temp goes up, and as the temp goes up, the volume of gas increases, meaning you are actually getting less gas when it is warmer

Have you ever had a gas tank apart? The fuel pickup is on the bottom of the tank (duh) and it has this fine mesh bag around it (on most cars). Sediment will get picked up no matter how much gas you have in your tank, unless the sediment is less dense than the fuel.

As for gas temps- fuel tanks are underground where it's a constant 58 degrees F. The outside temp makes no difference.