Friday, March 20, 2009

Tank 188 - 20 March 2009

Refueled this morning as a terrible mess of other people clogging the
Interstate due to an "accident" caused me to feel concerned that I may
not make it to the office with the low fuel light on.

So I pulled off at Aquia Harbor and bought me some Exxon Gasoline.
10.590 gallons to refill after going 392.1 miles. So I got 37.03 miles
per gallon.

I am pretty sure me gas tank is 12.5 or 13 gallons, so in all likelihood
I'd have been able to make it to work. However, according to "How It's
Made," gas tanks keep a 20% reserve inside after all other signs point
to "empty."

This makes sense, because otherwise more people would run out of gas, I
guess. Seeing the needle drop lower and lower, then the low fuel light
comes on. I did math (!) one day and found that 11 gallons into my tank
refills it to 80% of capacity, which confirmed the "HIM" statement that
it should register "empty" and still have 20% of gas in there.

I suppose this is to help also to prevent air from getting into the fuel
lines as the car goes up and down hills.

But knowing this means I can just go 40 more miles even after the light
comes on for 20 miles...

But I won't do that because I am a wimpy chicken.

The car manufacturers did a great job training all of us in this way.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Powered By Blogger