Never ! I can see when I need to buy more gas for my car !
Add me to the “defective gas gauge” crowd.
I was driving on the freeway when my car started to surge, and then died.
The gauge read 1/4.
I can’t remember how I figured it out, but I got a lift back home, got my gas can and added a gallon of gas and it started right up.
My last one (over 15 years ago) was a defective gas gauge but I’m a push it to the limit kind of girl at times so I know - when my car says it has hit zero KM to empty I’ve really got another 50 or so.
Yeah, all diesel engines are like that. Having had to bleed some diesel systems after changing filters (normal maintenance) I do my damndest to not let one run out of fuel. Some are easy, others a royal pain in the ass.
I’ve never ran out of gas. I’ve been down to zero limes to empty on my way to the gas station.
Somewhere back around 2003, my brother said I could have his severely rusted, deer crashed, hail damaged '89 S-10 pickup. So, I affixed mounts for a tow bar to the front of my Ford Festiva and headed from S. GA to central IN to get it. In the heat of the summer, with no A/C, I towed the Festiva with the truck for a grueling 14 hour trip. I thought I had an 1/8 of a tank, but I ran out of gas- in my driveway. I walked to my shed and found I had just enough in the mower gas can to get the rig the rest of the way into the yard.
I gave the truck to my next-door neighbor in 2009. He said the “lifter tick” I drove that thing with all that way really was a connecting rod bearing, as a rod found its way through the block a few months later.
I think it was within the last 20 years, though it may have been a bit longer. I went through my bank’s drive through to hit up the ATM for gas money, and the tank ran out right there. I had AAA at the time, and they charged me about $5 per gallon for maybe 2 gallons of gas.
I’ve been a licensed driver since 1981, and I have never run out of gas. I’ve come awfully close a few times, however.
I have only locked myself out of my car twice, and both of those incidents happened within a few days of each other.
How did he get out of that predicament?
I had an old bike that did something similar where it sometimes didn’t cut out when you hit reserve. What I think the problem was is that there was a little pinhole leak on the main pickup tube and so when the fuel level got below that, gas could still get to the carburetor but only very slowly. So if I was using a lot of throttle it’d cut out like normal, but if I was just puttering around slowly it wouldn’t.
Yup, came this close, once when I was 17. Close enough that I think it counts, because I had to put airplane fuel in my car. Friend and I returning home from dropping off our dates post-prom; at 2AM, lucky to find someone filling up the underground fuel tank at the regional airport. He assured me the gasoline would work fine in my car, and it did.
Mid-May, 2007, I hired a motorbike to whiz in and around a tiny fishing village in Vietnam. The fuel gauge said ‘full’ but after around 30 minutes the engine died, I was on a very beautiful but very deserted coastal road and waited around for help for 40 minutes or so. A local tour guide came along with a Norwegian couple, each of them riding motorbikes. The tour guide pushed me and my bike with his foot while riding his own bike, we went for about 5 miles before we arrived at a ‘service station’ which was just somebody’s house and some sort of fuel-type liquid in a plastic bottle out front.
I joined them for the rest of the day’s bike riding and we saw a few sights, although I probably would’ve found them on my own. I wasn’t sure if my bike would last so the company was welcome and they were good people.
My very first bike had a reserve tank which I used a few times, a bit of an inconvenience but not as much as when the two-stroke oil ran out :smack:
I think I was sixteen or seventeen so it was 1990/1991? I had to work on Christmas Eve, needed gas and figured I’d fill up on the way home after. Of course, all the stations in town closed early. I did not expect that, though maybe I should have. I drove to one nearby that had the “Open” light on, but as soon as I got out to pump the bastard inside turned off all the lights and hid. After that I gave up and tried to make it home. I had about a mile and a half left to go when it ran out. It was -20 and too cold to walk it in what I had on. Had to knock on a few doors before a family let me in to call home. My mom was pissed!
I was very young and very poor, as in still in college young and put $5 of gas in your car at a time poor (when $5 got you something). Yes, I knew it made more sense to fill up; I just didn’t have the $20. I thought I had just enough juice to make it where I was going, and turns out I was wrong! I fortunately ran out of gas spitting distance from a station, and some very nice people pushed my car to the pump. Thanks, strangers in Long Beach circa 2003!
Only happened to me once. I was working in a construction zone for a few months and apparently backed into something that dented my gas tank enough to throw the gauge off. It still read 1/4 tank when the car died. Fortunately, I was only about 100 yards from home at the time.
Almost did last weekend. Computer calculated I had about 20 miles spare on an 80 mile trip. We were in a hurry. No problem until we get to 10 miles from home and we hit huge tailbacks.
Some maniac on the bypass with a weapon, running across the road causing a multiple pile up and a police chase on foot and eventually helicopter. This is Edinburgh in the UK where maniacs are not a day to day happening (they are all in Glasgow pubs).
Finally get to the first petrol station on the route with the computer telling me I had 2 miles left. Fumes. It took more in the tank than the handbook says is the capacity.
So, almost within the past week. Before that about 30 years ago in an old MG with an unreliable gauge that used to stick. I didn’t spot it was not falling…