Haven’t you seen all those commercials for catheters?
Or a handy Gatorade bottle.
He said “an entire tank”, as in “an entire tank of gas”. I don’t think there’s many cars that can do 12 hours at highway speeds on one tank of gas.
That said, I am pretty sure I can go 12 hours without urinating, if I am not drinking much.
My mother used to insist on going out on the highway every few weeks to go really fast and “burn the carbon off” to keep her cars running.
Many years later, I had a high performance car. At one point I took it to a mechanic who said, “Eh, I think you just need to get 'er out and drive fast on a highway for a bit.” So maybe this is one thing my mother was right about.
The only cars that needed a break were those old, old ones where the radiator might boil over if you went up a hill and you had to stop and let them cool off. And Corvairs. My Corvair needed lots of breaks.
But in general, cars don’t need to rest. Someone above mentioned taxis. The Checker my husband used to drive had something like 500,000 miles on it, because it was rarely allowed to get cold.
There are going to be a lot of variables in answering this. Generally speaking, if you are driving the car gently it shouldn’t need to “rest”. Constant speed driving doesn’t take a lot of horsepower to maintain. That’s why highway mileage is generally a lot better than city mileage. Once everything is in motion and operating efficiently, stopping and letting everything cool down is less efficient.
However, if you are driving hard and/or have worn components they may heat up more and wear more the longer you drive. Also I would think with fluids if something is making your oil, coolant, or other fluids too hot (like driving too hard) getting hotter and hotter isn’t good and may lead to fluid breakdown.
My diesel Grand Cherokee can. It is a bladder buster. The farthest I’ve gone on a single tank is 835 miles. At 65 MPH, that is 13 hours. I think VW TDIs can go far, too.
OP, there’s no reason to stop for the car, as many have said, until the tank is empty. And then just fill her up and keep going. Keep your eye on the engine temps but it sounds like your Yaris is running well as it is.
The main limitations are for the humans: bladder, stretching, needing a break… And this, from an Iron Butt motorcyclist, too. Yes, I have taped a catheter on and run it down my pants leg to below my boot. On long rides, it’s great to relieve yourself on-the-go!
Just make sure smokey bear isn’t behind me as I’m marking territory.
I’ll just point out that oil level measurements are unreliable right after you stop-you need to give it time to drip back down, which can take many minutes.
Most manufacturers of cars I’ve owned have said this, but I’ve gotten into the habit of checking engine oil level every time I get gas. I can’t be bothered to wait, and I take that manufacturer requirement into account when I measure. But measuring every time, while a pain at first, is now second nature and gives me peace of mind.
Otherwise known as an ‘Italian tune-up’.
Many sailplane pilots do this too on their day-long cross-country flights, which are often over mountainous terrain like this. Gliders are often built with a pee port at the bottom of the fuselage with a plastic tube sticking up, and the end of the catheter goes into that. (Glider flights, of course, are limited to daylight hours, so that seems to put a limit on it.)
well, there is a kernel of truth to it. If a car is used for a lot of very short trips (e.g. the stereotypical “little old lady who only drove it to church and the grocery store”) then the engine may not reach or spend enough time at normal operating temperature. In which case:
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one of the two products of hydrocarbon combustion (water vapor) can collect and condense in the crankcase as it blows by the piston rings,
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the other combustion product (CO2) and the abundance of nitrogen in air can combine with said water vapor to form carbonic and nitric acids which also collect in the engine oil.
motor oil contains alkaline additives to neutralize these acids. But if the engine doesn’t spend enough time at normal temp, it can’t “boil” off the collected water and the acidic byproducts can deplete those neutralizing additives.
also, cold engines have to run rich (excess fuel in the mixture) and the unburned portion can again blow past the piston rings and dilute the oil.
so yeah, if you take a lot of short trips, it can be a good idea to hit the highway and go for a drive every so often.
We’re talking about the car, not the wife…