• This topic has 33 replies, 26 voices, and was last updated 11 years ago by hora.
Viewing 34 posts - 1 through 34 (of 34 total)
  • Fuel light lottery
  • bruk
    Full Member

    Driving home last night I got to -20 miles on range before filling up. 5 litres squeezed in beyond what stated tank size is so must have got close to running it empty.

    Never ran out yet and managed -30 in my old car. Always entertaining seeing how far you can stretch it out.

    legend
    Free Member

    If you can’t hear the fuel pump whirring, you’re not trying hard enough 😉

    Cougar
    Full Member

    As a rule of thumb, I’ve always got at least 20 miles between ’empty’ and ‘conked out.’

    Makes sense for tanks to be slightly oversized though; better to have an advertised 60 litre tank that’s actually 65 litres, than have some asshat sue you for false advertising when they can only get 59.9 litres in it.

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...
    Latest Singletrack Videos
    hora
    Free Member

    Ive run out once- scary as the car coughed then died with 5 secs. I didnt even make the side of the road. Luckily I was in central Manchester at 7am and not a motorway or an A road. Never again.

    Ive seen cars sat ‘inlane’ on the motorway. **** that.

    oneoneoneone
    Free Member

    i run out on the m27. luckily i rolled down the hill to the rotherham services. the scary part was rolling past cars at 45mph trying to get on from the M3!

    dr_adams
    Free Member

    my miles to empty changes…. depending on how i drive…

    chiefgrooveguru
    Full Member

    I reset the 2nd trip odometer when the light comes on, then fill it up before it reads 40 miles. I once miscalculated where the next petrol station was and conked out at just under 70 miles. Was wearing a suit and it was rush hour so I was quickly rescued – not done that since… I’ve put more than 50 litres (full capacity) in the tank too many times though.

    Klunk
    Free Member

    no always a good thing to run the tank dry. My dad’s renault estate was a nightmare to drive after he ran it empty, very much like driving a frog.

    nedrapier
    Full Member

    Found out on the way back from Chamonix that the ferries don’t run all night, as assumed, and had to high-tail it at imprudent speeds for the last 350km to avoid 4 hours kipping in the car.

    2 hours filled with adrenaline and T=SxD calcs, as well as trying to work out what the range guesser was guessing. Had left enough time for a splash and dash at some stage, but the only fuel stop between us and the ferry port was closed. Cue rolling off the throttle and hoping. 4km from ferry port, range read 0km.

    Into the ferry port, engine started misfiring (high mileage diesel; tank clag) frustrating delays at each checkpoint, hopes dwindling.

    Check-in lady says “trop tard” despite my winning smile and bullshine. Told to go to lane 200 and get some sleep.

    Limped over, still misfiring, concentrating on conservation of momentum at all costs, wondering who we might be able to scrounge a litre of diesel from at 2 am.

    THEN GOT WAVED ONTO THE FERRY! Thing was moving before we got up the stairs. Choirs of angels etc.

    Stuttered 2 miles to BP in Dover. All’s well that ends well. We’ll do well (i.e. very badly) to cut it finer than that.

    john_drummer
    Free Member

    mrs_d’s Citroen C4 turns off the “miles to empty” display when it thinks you’re out. That really is scary. Only ever done it once, I now tend to find the first station after it goes “ping” & put £20 in, then fill up completely at Morrisons.

    The most scary “ping” I’ve ever had though, was at 5am in the foothills of the Pyrenees, 2 hours from Barcelona airport. We were supposed to check in at 8am for the flight home, but I had visions of not getting past Vic. I still get flashbacks now

    underthethumb
    Free Member

    Just wondering about three guys I avoided on Saturday night, driving home late 230am, me on inside lane of the freeway, cruise control on at 75mph, not a sinner in sight, then over a slight rise in the road, saw something up ahead – in the flipping middle lane too – an old 3 series being pushed along by the three guys, must have been out of fuel and passed the last exit so decided to push home – anyway called the Police to let them know – some people have so sense of self preservation.

    wrightyson
    Free Member

    I ran out on a Friday night four weeks ago 400 yds from morrisons!! A6 narrow bit in belper. Ran to petrol station, can of diesel bought, poured in, turned her over, and over and over and click! Dead fookin battery!! Never had so much abuse from fellow drivers before, who just assumed id parked up there!! 🙄
    Waited half an hr for the mrs, then spent another 30 mins with leads trying to start it!! Not how I’d envisaged my first night of a weeks holiday!!!!! Never again 👿

    Junkyard
    Free Member

    only run out once and that was on the petrol forecourt and I had enough speed to roll to the pump.

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Got too close for comfort a couple of times in my Transit, both times a combination of pushing my luck, and the planned fuel stops being out of diesel.

    I’m not sure if it genuinely starts sucking air, or if the ECU decides to trick you into panicking, but both times, as soon as the range dropped to 0, the van started missing about once per second. I only drove for another mile before getting to the fuel station, and once sat on the forecourt decided to run fine.

    Ran out in my old car once too, I had one of those ‘how long has the fuel light been on??’ moments, then it promptly stalled at a set of lights halfway round a roundabout, opposite a petrol station. My wife got out to give me a shove when the lights turned green, once rolling I managed to start it and then promptly took the wrong exit and had to go down a dual carriageway for a mile before U turning and back to the petrol station, where she was waiting for me. Had to leave it in second as it kept stalling as soon as the revs dropped 🙂

    A mate from school ran dry outside my house. He decided to roll down the hill to the petrol station a mile away, despite my repeated warnings about the fact he would have run out of power brakes/steering by the time he got to the end of the road, he still made a good job of scaring the sht out of me as we careered onto the forecourt whilst he desperately tried to snap the brake pedal and avoid all the pumps. Shortly afterwards I stopped accepting lifts after having a couple of ‘moments’ where we skidded across junctions, and one of those was only because I shouted at him to stop.

    wrightyson
    Free Member

    Exactly the same in my transit! Like driving a misfiring old petrol!!

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    re. Transits, have you noticed when you now you have 15 miles to the petrol station, and you have say 20 miles on the range, it starts dropping scarily fast? Seems to drop in multiples of 3, and then occasionally recover giving you a false sense of hope?!

    peterfile
    Free Member

    Hmmmm, one of my favourite games 🙂

    February 2012 – 6pm
    Dark, freezing cold and snowing

    We’d just come off of a freezing cold and exhausting day on buachaille etive mor, fuel light had come on before we parked up for the day.

    21 miles across Rannoch Moor to the nearest petrol station in Tyndrum (and civilisation) on a Sunday night in the middle of winter.

    Longest 21 miles of my life. I’m sure I was swinging my feet in the passenger seat trying to help the car along! 🙂

    timber
    Full Member

    Had to turn the Land Rover round with the tractor on the hill before.
    Fuel pump is at the front of the tank it turns out as I just couldn’t go uphill any further.
    Once turned around, it fired up and was just enough to give brakes and steering back down to the road. Downhill run to the fuel station, but still didn’t quite make it.
    I had thought nothing of the fuel gauge pinging at me, didn’t know it had pinged at the boss for the previous 6 days.

    mboy
    Free Member

    Have run out of fuel twice in a car before, and once on a motorbike.

    First time in a car, youthful exuberance and lots of “it’ll be alright, i’ll put a tenner in later.” Well, just as I passed one garage (it was 2p a litre more expensive than the next garage 3 miles on which I was going to put some in at), I ran out of fuel. Cue a mile walk to buy a can and some fuel… Ah well! Lesson learnt?!?!

    Next time was on my first motorbike. Now silly me hadn’t switched the fuel switch off reserve when I filled the bike up last time, so as the bike started spluttering on the dual carriageway I thought “fear not” as I reached down to switch it to reserve. Ah… Balls! It cut out completely just as I was pulling off the Oxford ringroad, left me just enough momentum to get up the hill, but then had to push the bike for half a mile to the nearest forecourt, in blazing sunshine wearing black leathers!

    Last time I did it in a car, slightly unfortunate as I had tried to fill up the night before, but the station was out of diesel. So cue me driving very carefully (my Golf had a theoretical range of 600 miles on a tank), as it was already on 588 miles that night and was 6 miles or so to nearest petrol station. And guess what… As 594 ticked over, it ran out… About 4-500 metres short of the petrol station! Luckily this time I had a can of diesel in the boot for some reason already, so sloshed it in, and the car started pretty readily with only a minimum of juddering.

    coffeeking
    Free Member

    We set off from Barmouth in my other half’s car after a bank holiday weekend. Nothing open for fuel, red light had been on and off all day but we’d forgotten that Wales is a place of sparse fuel opportunities. We managed to make it to Chester with the red light on solid the whole way. Car does ~42mpg on average, distance is about 75 miles. That was a tense journey.

    I’ve run out in all of my cars relatively regularly. Not through any sort of stingeyness, purely through lack of organisation. My “favourite” was having to use the starter to crank the car off the no-parking road section, up a long ramp, through an automatic roller door and into a parking space before having to trot off to buy a container and some fuel outside the city centre, then come back in to get the car running again.

    Now I carry a spare gallon in all of my cars!

    trail_rat
    Free Member

    Haha timber of course the landy fuel gauge pings from roughly half way down the tank depending on whih way the corner is 🙂

    Folks carry fuel inside the car – does your car nae stink ?

    hels
    Free Member

    Electronic fuel gauges pah ! It’s all smoke and mirrors you know.

    My first car was an Anglia, it was 20 years old when I got it, and came with a couple of huge boxes of spares. So I had two broken fuel gauges.

    Just drove around with a litre of petrol in the boot. Got good at keeping track in my head how far I had driven since the petrol station, kept it topped up.

    Only ran out a couple of times, but did knacker the carburetor. Luckily the spare one worked OK so my dad fixed it, and we installed the gauge that showed full all the time, and sold the car. The lady even offered us $5 for the “full tank” and my dad had the brass neck to take it. I don’t feel guilty, it was an awesome car, she was planning on restoring it.

    rocketman
    Free Member

    Ran out of fuel on the motorbike once while holidaying in Scotland because the fuel was leaking out of a hole in the tank caused by a crash earlier in the day

    This was in the far NW and I hadn’t seen a soul all day but after walking for a while with the tank under my arm the inevitable (diesel) Land Rover pulled up and took me 5 miles to the nearest garage (in the loosest sense of the word) where an old boy with a beard like a rhodedendron bush bodged the tank with some mastic, sold me a gallon of 2 star (remember that) and took me back to my bike.

    oneoneoneone
    Free Member

    i just remembered, i ran out of diesel in a army land rover on the MPA to stanley road in the falklands once! the fuel gauge read full when i left half way there and i hit a bump and the needle falls in to the red! (must have been stuck) run out 3/4 miles further on. Luckily i knew the reccy mechs so gave him a call.

    carlosg
    Free Member

    i’m never lucky in lotteries so don’t risk it , I brim the tank every week on payday.

    TheFlyingOx
    Full Member

    Mine hits fuel cut on anything less than half a tank.
    I may or may not need to look into this further…

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Why don’t you lot fill up on 1/4 tank?

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I want the Clubcard points and Tesco isn’t always convenient.

    Pook
    Full Member

    i run out on the m27. luckily i rolled down the hill to the rotherham services. the scary part was rolling past cars at 45mph trying to get on from the M3!

    Rowhnams you must mean? It’s about 250 miles to rotherham!

    coffeeking
    Free Member

    Why don’t you lot fill up on 1/4 tank?

    Why not fill up at 1/2? No point not using all the tank if in most situations you can fill up as needed.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    too many times

    Why don’t you lot fill up on 1/4 tank?

    3 days to pay day normally

    On the way to work had to leave it in the lane where cars get burned out on a weekend.

    Icy morning heading to work early before the garage opened. Didn’t factor in defrosting. Got within 2 miles of open garage with 3 others in the car before it died. Hitched in with a mate and got lift home after with fuel can.

    Nearest scary one was heading to the south lakes for a winter weekend. Had some shortcut directions from a mate involving all the passes to cut some distance to Wasdale.

    Fuel light came on at J36, all garages shut… over one of the fells the fuel light started blinking as if to say come on, then the glow plug light came on. Made it there got someone to follow me to the garage on the Sunday night. Put £5 in(when that used to get you something about 6l) as it was far too expensive to fill the thing up. Got back in and the fuel light was still on.

    oneoneoneone
    Free Member

    yeah rownhams! that would have been some good rolling

    onehundredthidiot
    Full Member

    A guy a work was involved in a minor fender bender on the slip road just after fuelling when the attending copper reckoned he’d have stopped before contact if he hadn’t just brimmed the tank.

    hora
    Free Member

    I don’t tend to fill up as it’d double the weight of my car (700kg) 😉 😆

Viewing 34 posts - 1 through 34 (of 34 total)

The topic ‘Fuel light lottery’ is closed to new replies.