Gas unexpectedly ran out!

[MadMax]

Originally Posted by ECBurton

It happened to me tonight on the freeway. Driving home from Chicago. Fortunately a good samaritan pulled over and ran to the gas station for me. A gallon of gas fixed the problem. I went from two bars to a loss of power and stranded. I will check with the dealership next time I'm in for maintenance.

And I have to agree with Carnageehw. The fuel gauge should work, it's there for a reason, and to bypass reliance upon the fuel gauge and watching mileage on your odometer/tripmeter is simply ludicrous.

What is ludicrous is not knowing how many miles you average out of a tank of gas. It is equally ludicrous to depend on one instrument and not using a little common sense!

Sorry, but I know my Yaris is good for between 350-400 miles after I fill it up. If I find myself at two bars with 395 miles out of the tank then I'm not going to believe it suddenly became a much more efficient car!

One day while driving my old VW Passat I noticed the tachometer read about 4 thousand RPM higher than it should. I immediately engaged the clutch and realized that the sound of the engine did not indicate it was revving any higher than it should, despite what the instrument was reporting. Turned out the tach went bad, it happens; but I applied a little logic to the situation instead of blindly relying on the one device for information.

No matter how smart the car is, it's only as smart as the person driving it.