When I’ve got 200 miles. This is a nice easy number to divide things into if I’m calculating my fuel efficiency.
Trips: 300 miles or when I need to pee, whichever comes first. Usually they happen about the same time, because I tend to drive kinda fast so this is usually 3½ to 4 hours.
A rare example of a situation in which old carbureted cars really were superior. On those, the fuel the engine was actually using was sitting in the bowl in the carburator and the fuel pump merely refilled the bowl. When the tank was near-empty it was no big deal if the gas sloshed away from the fuel pickup so long as it sloshed back before the bowl ran dry. Of course, running the fuel pump dry wasn’t an issue either.
Many times I travel long distances in areas where gas is expensive, by my home prices are better.
So I try to plan around those trips, to have enough gas so I don’t have to fill up in the expensive area. This sometimes means coming back with the light on and the needle on the letter E which is below the line for E.
Other times the light is a good indicator for me that it’s time to start considering filling up.
I fill mine every second week. At that time the tank is about half.
I heard it was more that all the shit in your tank falls to the bottom so you are sucking that through your system.
1/4 tank or a little lower, but I do not fill it all the way up.
There is some sort of leak in my vehicle’s fill tube so that if I fill it up until the pump shuts itself off the couple ounces of gas leaks onto the ground. Seems to only happen if the fill tube is all the way full so I just don’t full fill up.
Prius - I fill it up when it is one bar or blinking in the summer, in the winter I usually fill it up before it gets to blinking mode.
If I’m heading for a trip, I will fill up if I’m under half, esp. since gas is usually cheaper in MN than WI (where I usually travel)
Brian
I answered “1/2 tank”, but what’s more important is that we try to fill it up on Saturday evening or Sunday, which is when the prices are lowest around here. If the price looks especially good one weekend, we’ll top up even if we’ve got 3/4 of a tank. If it gets to 1/2 tank on a weekday, we’ll wait for the weekend if possible.
Generally that means we’re filling it up every other weekend during the school year; I’m a teacher and I’m the one who drives to work, while my husband takes the bus.
Somewhere around 1/4 tank. Depends on when I remember to go to the gas station, really.
When the “range” display on my dash says I have less than 50 miles left.
You do know that the pickup is at the very bottom of the tank so if you have shit in the rank it would get picked up regardless of the fuel level.
Anyway pickups have a filter screen.
Don’t sweat it is my advice.
I used to fill it every Monday and/or Thursday, when a local chain discounts the price by 5 cents a litre.
Then an Esso station, nowhere near any of the local chain’s stations, began the same deal on Friday through Sunday. So I have more of a choice, depending on my location, four days a week.
I’d get an additional three cents off at the Esso if I use a Speed Pass (it links to a credit or debit card), but the privacy disclaimer when registering for it says that Esso will sell my financial information to third parties.
There is no info on what the third parties might be, so that might include Richard Nixon’s head in a jar. I’d rather pay the three cents a litre.
For me, it depends mainly anymore on the trends seen at GasBuddy. If prices are falling, then I’ll wait til it is almost empty before filling, while if prices are going up I’ll top off fairly frequently.
When the light comes on. Every time I buy a new car, I promise myself that this time I will be utterly vigilant and not let the level get below half full. Sadly, I fail almost immediately.
This is also what I do, though I didn’t know about GasBuddy.
I fill mine up depending on my location and where I’m going to be driving in the next couple of days. I work in DC and I’ll never fill up there because it’s usually 20 cents more expensive per gallon in DC. If I have plans to go to New Jersey in the next couple of days, I’ll try to wait to fill up there because it’s cheaper and I can sit in the car and let the attendant pump my gas.