I have two unrelated questions about the function of gas station pumps.
After I swipe my credit card and select the octane grade, the pump display says “begin pumping gas” or something synonymous. But if I squeeze the pump handle as soon as I see that message, nothing happens. Instead, there are 5-8 seconds during which the gallons/dollars displays flash on and off (resetting?), and only after it settles down will the pump “catch,” and start dispensing gas into my car.
Why is there a delay? And why does it tell me to start pumping gas before the pump is ready?
On every pump near where I live and work (Boston area) the pump handle has a small swivelling piece of metal built into it. This could, in theory, be used to “lock” the handle into “pumping mode,” so that I could (for instance) stick my hands into my pockets on a cold day while I filled the tank. But this theory can only become practice if the bottom of the pump handle interior is fitted with a strip of metal ridges, so the swivelling piece doesn’t slide off and release the pump handle grip.
I recently used a gas pump in D.C. where this was the case, and so I could let the gas pump itself whilst I made faces at my wife through the passenger-side window. But here in Boston, while every single pump handle has that swivelling piece, NONE of them have the ridges that enable the auto-pumping functionality.
Why aren’t they fitted with those super-useful ridges? Have vandals broken them off? Do the stations themselves disable this feature due to safety concerns, that the overflow safeguards might fail and cause gas to spill out? And is the Boston area unique in this regard?
My buddy showed me a neat little trick for gas pumps that don’t have those ridges.
Take your gas tank cap and wedge it in the pump handle. The pump still has an auto-shut off for when the tank is full so don’t worry about overflow.
Gives me free time to wash my windows while filling up.
I have noticed the same thing. I think it varies from station to station. The purpose seems to be to discourage you from leaving the pump while the gas is pumping, which is a violation of federal regulations, or so the little signs say.
It is a serious pisser to disover that a pump is rigged that way here in the arctic midwest. A workaround is to insert your gas cap between the trigger and the guard. This presents its own set of problems, however. If you do this, you will need to stay with your vehicle for sure because unlike the locking mechanism that is built into the pump, the gas cap does not give when the pump senses the tank is full. It will keep fueling and make an environmentally-unfriendly mess. Here is a website discussing this, and other workarounds.
Another thing I’ve seen lately is concern about static electricity around gas pumps. Guess what a major cause of static discharges seems to be (as far as there are major causes of static discharges, I guess, as I’ve never heard of one, but anyway)? Setting the pump to auto-shut-off, getting in your car and sitting, getting out, and grabbing the pump handle. Clothes on upholstery often = static. So they tell you now not to get in and out of your car while you’re pumping, and to the touch the body of your vehicle before starting the pump. Seems like disabling the auto-shut-off is a way to force the no-getting-in-and-out-of-your-car idea.
I’ve seen signs at some stations saying that using your gas cap for this is illegal, depends on the state I imagine. Next time I see one of the signs I’ll get the exact text.
The cap trick should not cause a spill. In the gazillion gallons I have pumped (never had anything that got much more than 20mpg’s) the pump lever will just go limp; it does not have to snap back. To reengage the pump, the lever must be fully released to the off position then squeeze again.
I too have noticed some area where the lock thingie is removed.
Yeah, that shit bothers me too. Just what is the delay there?
And another thing, what’s up with some of these gas stations that after the pumps stops, even if the tank isn’t full, when I press the handle again, it goes slower, as in .001 gallons a second slower! I can see if you wanted to discourage topping off, but sometimes the nozzle is at an angle of the filler neck causing a pressure build up in the filler tube, causing it to stop.
the delay is because the pump is mechanical. it takes much longer for mechanical switces, servos, and motors to charge and engage than it does for a computer to tell it to.
Last week MythBusters on the Discovery channel they attempted to cause a gas station explosion with cell phones and staticy panties. No explosions. None (well, when they added a lot more gas and some other igniter, but that was just their reward for being patient.)
Yeah, that lever thing is just for safety. They don’t want people walking around and not paying attention to the pumps while their car is being fueled. All of the self-serve pumps are like that here now (Winnipeg). But if you ever get out of the car quickly at a full-serve gas station and start pumping your own gas, you’ll notice that those pumps still have the ridges.
Regarding the presence of hands-free nozzle-on locks, or lack thereof, that is the purview of the local/county/state authority having jurisdiction, typically a Fire Marshal.
Self-serve fuel is not permitted in NJ, apparently because the NJSFM has insufficient confidence in diligence of the motoring public towards vehicle fuelling safety. In PA, it varies (like everything else) by individual towns and cities.
Static electricity is a greater hazard when portable nonmetallic fuel containers are filled while sitting inside the carpeted trunk of an auto or bedliner of a pickup truck.
For additional information, see this link from the Petroleum Equipment Institute.
The pump handle locks may be a state regulated thing. Since I wasn’t paying attention, I’ll have to guess at the time frame involved; about 6 or 7 years ago the handle locks all disappeared around here and 2 or 3 years ago they suddenly reappeared.
Around here it varies, even within a single gas station. I think they just break, and not repair them. At my most frequented gas stations, I know which pumps to avoid.
I used to use my fuel cap on other cars, but my current one is tethered too close, and won’t reach into the handle. Wallet’s too soft (too empty?) to hold the handle, so, like I said, i just learn the pumps.
In any case, as mentioned above, the pump will still turn off whether you have the trigger pulled or not.
One time I let the gas spill at a pit stop in Ontario – apparently their auto-shutoffs didn’t work upside down, so, well, it didn’t automatically shut off. It was upside down because I was on the wrong side of the island, but the hose reached, and it’d never been an issue before.
"Illegal to place gas cap in nozzle’ is the exact wording of the strickers on the pumps at Hess stations here in New York. There is, however, no helpful information like what specific law prohibits this activity.
For that matter, given the wording of the sticker, placing your gas cap in the nozzle should be illegal, since the nozzle is the part of the pump handle where the liquid comes out, is it not?
Proper wording should be: “Do Not Place Gas Cap In Pump Trigger”.
I started doing it years ago at a station without trigger locks. The cop at the pump in front of me did it, and I just fo;;owed suit.
Anecdotally, just the other day I was at a Hess station with older-style pumps. (No credit/debit cards)> The handle opening was too small to fit the gas cap in, so I had to use my wallet.
The ability to lock the handle vanished in the UK many years ago, but here in Georgia, pretty much everywhere still has it. I like it - it allows me to clean the windows while pumping gas.
And my recollection of the Mythbusters episode is that static electricity can cause a fire (in the right circumstances), but cell phones cannot.
On the mythbusters episode, they had a heck of a time even getting static electricity to cause a fire, but they finally did make it go boom. This seems to be fairly true for real life as well. Although there are millions of people filling up at the pump, the number of fires started by static electricity is a really small number. I want to say about 150 per year, but that’s from memory and I don’t have a cite offhand for it.
Mythbusters never was able to make anything go boom with a cell phone. Curiously, I’ve only seen one pic of a pump fire that was supposedly started by a cell phone. You can clearly see in the pic that the guy had the cell phone in his right hand up to his ear, and touched the car near the pump handle with his left hand, which is where the fire ignited. In other words, it was pretty obviously a static discharge that caused the fire, not the cell phone. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop a “fire official” (according to the caption) from calling it a cell phone fire. This particular fire looked like just some spilled gas on the side of the car that went up in a quick whooosh of flame. The guy probably had to change his shorts afterwards, but it didn’t look like much damage was done. Still, if you can get that much flame you can potentially have something rather catastrophic. I lock the pump handle all the time in the winter, if the pump is so equipped, but I usually don’t get in and out of the car while it’s pumping. If I do (to empty trash or something) then I touch the driver’s side door to make sure to discharge myself before I grab the pump handle.
I personally have never spilled gas due to a handle lock, but I did see someone else do it. This was an elderly gentleman with a rather large 80’s car with the gas filler behind the license plate. He put the nozzle in what he thought was the tube, but missed, then locked the handle. Several people (including myself) noticed that gas was pouring out onto the ground underneath his car and started yelling for him to shut it off. Fortunately nothing went boom, and the mess was cleaned up without incident.
Well, yeah, that makes sense. But surely it wouldn’t be difficult to program said computer to delay giving the customer the pump-your-gas go-ahead until all those servos and things have caught up?
As for the danger of spill-over, my experience is the same as that of Blown & Injected: all pumps automatically shut off when the tank is full, requiring the pumper to fully release and re-squeeze. The only danger of spilling would be as in engineer_comp_geek’s example of the poor old guy missing the tank entirely.
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