Women. For Pity's Sake.

Right then. Baby’s asleep in bed, toddler’s asleep in bed, 9 year old has just gone up to bed. I’m halfway through cooking a nice rump steak when the phone rings.

It’s the wife, who is driving back from a course somewhere, and has stopped in a village about 60 miles away having run out of petrol. The nearest petrol station that is still open this late is 20 miles in the other direction.
Apparently the light has only just come on. Of course, you can’t fill it up before the light comes on can you.

🙁

At least eat the steak before you go and get her.

LOL

Why would you go get her. Eat steak, go to bed.

I loaned my car to my wife as hers needed a service. She dropped me at work.

When she picked me up at 4.45pm the Engine Management Warning light was flashing, accompanied by an audible buzzer. Literally alarming. We had a WTF! have you done type conversation. The buzzer continued to sound all the way home (actually straight to the garage where we simply swapped the cars).

After plugging it into the computer the mechanic told me that the car had been over-revved at 4.21pm. My wife denies all knowledge, despite driving along the A90 at the time.

HOW?

DOH – just re-read your post.

Taxi!

oops. My friend broke down outside a texaco a couple of years ago and rang her boyfriend not knowing what else to do. He traveled an hour from his work to come pick her up as she didn’t have break down cover only to find it was out of petrol. The irony was too much and he dumped her. Probably not so easy to dump someone who you have three kids with though.

If only loco motive, 20 miles the other way from home, not from her. She’s in the middle of nowhere.

Steak eaten, wine returned to fridge, off we go.

you’ll get 20 miles with the light on, especially if you drive sensibly

Try to retain your temper if you arrive to find her sat with the engine running and oil/handbrake light on 🙂

getting a haircut yesterday

barbers wife calls in for the car keys

he tells her it’s low on fuel

she asks if it’s petrol or diesel

petrol he replies

she leaves

he says to me – ‘it’s actually her car, she asks me this regularly’ 😯

I loaned my car to my wife as hers needed a service a full engine rebuild

There.

My Dad once didn’t do up the sump plug properly on their car (this would’ve been the 60s sometime, a Honda S800 I think which is now a classic) and the oil leaked out. My Mum continued to drive it until the engine siezed solid. Did you not hear a funny noise or something?

you’ll get 20 miles with the light on

This is the bit that’s confused me, has she run out of petrol or has the light come on. She’s not just stopped the car because the light has come on, has she?

I can get about 60 miles with the light on, it’s probably a bit more but never wanted to push it any further than that without a can in the back.

I had a petrol station up in Durham some years ago, this lass comes in with a Fiat 127 (remember them, engine at the back?) & asks me to put some oil in, so I did. When she asked me how I did it so quick she said ‘well when I do it, it takes ages cos I pour it down there…(pointing at the dipstick tube)

I once was in a garage in the US when this car pulls up and fills up. They stay at the pump for a while and then one gets out and goes to find a mechanic. Apparently they can’t get the car in gear. The mechanic does it first time – turns out they didn’t know you had to put your foot on the brake to engage gear, and they’d somehow managed to drive a hundred or so miles without knowing that.

That guy was me 🙂

I borrowed someones manual car once when I was in the states, they’d just come back in it so when I got in the engine was still running. Momentary panic when I came back to it after I had parked and tried to start it. Absolutely nothing, not turning at all. Turns out you need your foot on the clutch to start the engine, American drivers obviously cannot be trusted. 🙂

Mine tried to kill me yesterday. Didnt spot the car that was sitting in her blindspot. Thankfully I spotted it though.

Dont sit in peoples blind spot when they have an indicator on and are trying to change lanes.

Surrounded By Zulus – Member
Mine tried to kill me yesterday. Didnt spot the car that was sitting in her blindspot. Thankfully I spotted it though.

Dont sit in peoples blind spot when they have an indicator on and are trying to change lanes.

My pet motorway hate of mine, not over taking or crawling by very slowly sat on your rear quarter. Overtake me properly, don’t bother sitting in another lane if overtaking me at less than walking pace.

Should have about 10 litres left when the light comes on, or approx 1/6 of a tank usually.

My other half was good enough to drive from Darley Moor (Ashbourne) to Stafford with the handbrake on. Obviously it was my fault for asking her to drop me off there so I could do a road race and ride home, and she could have the car.

My ex drove my brand new car over a 2ft wall because ‘i didn’t see it and it was dark and i didn’t want to reverse out’
Munted it completely, can’t to this day believe she managed to get it all the way over.

mrs gunmas here my husband decided we didn’t need to fill up with petrol at our local tesco (petrol gage says 5 miles) but decided that we could make it to the next petrol station a mile away (ha ha) we broke down half a mile from the petrol station, could just see it at the top of the hill, guess who had to push the car (volvo estate) up the last half mile followed by a bus load of cheering secondary school children. reckon he will listen to me next time i say we need petrol, probably not lol

Don’t quite understand why your wife couldn’t have driven to the petrol station herself as I’d expect any car to do 20 miles with the light on, no problem (the computer on mine usually says it’ll do 40+ miles from when the light comes on).

My wife has history for borrowing my car and then bumping it. The best one was a few years back when she borrowed my Accord and managed to reverse it into one of the neighbours cars. Not a lot of damage done but my car needed the bumper replaced and then a bit of painting. When this is done I picked the car up from the dealers but had to return it the very next day. The reason? My wife had borrowed the car again and managed to damage the very same bumper… Not convinced the dealer believed me when I told them my wife did it!

My wife hasn’t tended to borrow my car in recent years but unfortunately she likes the Merc coupe I’ve just bought (partly ’cause it’s an automatic and partly because she likes the looks) and has started borrowing it. I think I’ll be getting to know the local Mercedes dealership quite well…

She was 60 miles south of home. Nearest open petrol station was 20 miles north of home. She’d already done about 20 miles with the light on, then decided to stop in a village rather than grind to a halt in the road somewhere, so a glimmer of common sense there I suppose.

I used to have a Range Rover and as the former Mrs MTG’s drive was a bit steep with a narrow gap between the gate pillars, I used to put it in low range to reverse up the drive to save slipping the clutch.
Mrs MTG borrowed it one day and it wasn’t until she had driven about three miles that she wondered why she was flat out in 5th, but still couldn’t keep up with the traffic doing 60mph on the main road.

On the other hand…

I used to have an AEC Matador breakdown truck and used to tow my Land Rover to steam rallies with it to use as sleeping accommodation.
I set off for a rally once and had gone about 15 miles when I thought I could do with a drink from out of the Land Rover.
I pulled in to a layby and as soon as I opened the cab door I could smell something burning.
A Land Rover handbrake has absolutely no effect on a 9 ton breakdown truck. 🙂

So the light came on sort of as she was passing the last petrol station but despite knowing there wasn’t any more in the 80 miles between there and home she chose to press on instead of turning back for a couple of miles and getting fuel? Yes, some common sense I suppose…

Having said that I’ve never been called out because my wife has run out of fuel but she has had to come and bring me fuel once when I ran out. In my defence it was on a motorbike that doesn’t have a fuel gauge. I always reset the trip and normally I’d get about 145-155 miles before having to switch to reserve, after which there was something like 3-4 litres left. Driving back from a meeting down south and deciding to take the back roads I was rather shocked when I had to switch to reserve at about 100 miles, possibly because I had been enjoying myself riding the bike pretty hard on some very twisty roads. Shouldn’t have been a problem as there was one petrol station between myself and home however when I got there it was closed and by that point I probably only had a litre of fuel left and perhaps 20 miles+ to any petrol station likely to be open. I made it to about 15 miles from home before running out and then had to talk SWMBO through draining fuel from one of the other bikes into a can to bring to me. Unfortunately it was quite late at night by then so she had to wake the kids and bring them with her. Lets just say I wasn’t in the good books for some time.

My other half borrow my car a few years ago. Phones to say she’d clipped a bollard and there was a bit of a scrape on the front bumper. Hmm.
Got home to find the bumper pretty much hanging off and a nice big dent in the front wing.
I’d only got it fixed a month or two before. Alsi I had literally just changed insurers and there was still an ongoing claim from when some **** reversed into it. Because of this my protected NCD was in limbo and I had to patch it up with elephant tape and drive it like that for 3 months! FFS.

Mrs Q once decided to wash her car engine with a hose pipe. She had seen people using jet washers and thought that the hose would do as well.

My mate and I strugged to figure out why the car was misfiring, then on taking it to a garage after giving up we were shown soaking wet spark plugs. Strange we thought. Replaced the spark plugs and everything was ok.

ToldMrs Q about the water – that is when she told us about washing the engine…..bless.

Where is this petrol station you’re talking about that she drove past?

She stopped 60 miles south of home, 20 miles after the light came on. The petrol station I had to go to and fill up the cans was 20 miles north of home, so 80 miles from where she was. To turn around and go back to the nearest open one would be about 60-70 miles south of where she stopped.

Where the hell do you live? Canada? the Australian outback? Wales???

when the M40 was first linked up all the way to Birmingham, there wasn’t a single petrol station between the start of the M23, the M25, M40, M42 and halfway up the M5, about 160 miles. Judging my the amount of cars I used to see being re-fuelled by the AA, heading off the motorway to get some was not an option.

Worse. Scotland. The top bit.

Huh! and they’re always going on about all the North Sea Oil up there. Seems it’s not so accessible after all!

these Londoners don’t realise what its like being more than 100yards from a tescometropetrol station.

You can get beyond driving distance from an open petrol station in Somerset too. DAMHIK.

What does DAMHIK mean?

It’s pronounced Damn Hick

Firstly, my wife is way smarter than me. More qualified, more common sense, etc.

However, when she told me that her passenger electric window wasn’t working, I feared the worst, especially as we were just about to sell the car. However, she hadn’t noticed the button with the window symbol with a cross through it. Ah.

Another time, she told me my car wouldn’t start. Strange, as it was almost brand new at the time. She’d been trying to start it in Drive. I know I should have told her, but as a physicist, surely she should know it’s not sensible to start a car when there could be some drive through the wheels.

I never forgave my ex-wife for putting a Golf GTi 16v on it’s roof. She was trying to avoid a horsebox which nipped out in front of her apparently.

Her anticipation skills were nonexistant.

Me using the wife’s car a few weeks back (she had mine as she was doing a longer trip). When i got back:

‘How long have the brakes been squealing like that?’

‘what do you mean squealing?’

Take her outside and drive car a little way up the raod and back.

‘I’ve not heard that. But i always have the radio on’

Fortunately the pads themselves had squealer tabs on them to signify when to change them. I could let her off but for one thing:

SHE RUINED THE LAST SET OF DISCS BY RUNNING THE PADS DOWN TO METAL SO SHE CAN HARDLY CLAIM IGNORANCE

Needless to say i took the blame as I’m obviously responsible for the maintenance of anything mechanical and should have checked routinely for her.

DAMHIK = Don’t ask me how I know

I am guessing.

Oh and for a bit of balance, wasn’t it a bloke on here who thought that you waited until the oil light came on before topping it up with oil, just like fuel…?