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I’ll admit it – back in my younger days I loved to live life on the edge.
Yep, I would drive all around town or even on the interstate and backroads with my car running on fumes, waiting until the very last minute to wheel into a gas station and pump a gallon or two in the tank.
The first time I ran out of gas it was sort of a thrill. I had lived on the edge and finally teetered over it. Even the two mile walk to the nearest gas station and the two mile walk back had me humming to a great tune.
I won’t go into any details here, but suffice it to say that the second time I ran out of gas wasn’t nearly as much fun. After that I decided I would always try to make sure my car’s gas level never got below a quarter of a tank.
Well, over time I learned there are several reasons to keep at least half a tank of gas in my car:
1 – Living on the edge by driving on fumes greatly increases the odds of your car running out of gas before you can make it the nearest gas station.
2 – If you get stuck in traffic on the interstate and have to sit there for several hours (which occasionally happens for various reasons) you might need to keep your car’s engine running in order to stay warm (or cool if it’s a really hot day). You won’t be able to do that if you don’t have enough gas in your tank to allow it.
3 – You might have to take an unexpected detour for some reason (like the one that took me literally half-way across the state of North Carolina on back roads because one major highway was shut down), and there might not be a gas station anywhere along that alternate route.
4 – The gasoline in your car serves as a coolant for your car’s fuel pump. When the gas level drops below a quarter of a tank the fuel pump heats up because there’s less fuel to help dissipate the heat it generates while it’s working to pump the gas.
If this happens once or twice it’s probably no big deal, but if it happens fairly often there’ll probably be an expensive (and very disruptive) fuel pump replacement in your future.
Yes, I know that a quarter of a tank is less than half a tank, but it’s easy to go from half a tank to a quarter without even realizing it.
5 – Every time you pump gasoline into your car’s tank a tiny bit of “trash” get pumped into it as well. That trash always settles to the bottom of the tank where it’s pretty much ignored by the fuel pump. But when the gas level drops to near the bottom of the tank the fuel pump will suck up some trash along with the gas.
Your fuel filter will filter most of the trash out of the gas that passes through it, but over time the filter will get clogged and cause your engine to start “missing”, losing power or even failing to run at all. Not allowing your tank to drop below half-full will help keep your fuel filter from getting clogged up and make it last as long as possible.
6 – Always knowing you have a least half a tank of gas is just good for your state of mind. Well, it is for mine at least, now that I no longer enjoy living life on the edge.
Of course life takes its twists and turns and there will likely be times when you won’t be able to fill up in time to prevent your tank from dropping below the half-full mark, but hopefully those times will be few and far between. And the fewer times that happens, the better.
To finish up, here’s a very informative short video that explains the fuel pump issue a lot better than I did…