by Outcast_Searcher » Sun 01 Jan 2023, 18:57:59
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', ' ')Driving 20 miles and back to get it cheaper would not save me any money and I did not have 20 miles worth left in the tank.
I don't get the logic of waiting to get gasoline until one is running on fumes.
If something goes wrong and you're in a remote area, you're screwed. If something goes wrong and you need to run the A/C or heat in a traffic or road problem, you're screwed. Unless you do that a lot, you're more likely to foul the fuel filter(s) dragging the gunk that tends to accumulate from the bottom of the tank, or the fuel pump if the filter(s) fail or are old. (In the good old days the mechanical ones were cheap to replace. The modern electric ones, not so much).
I generally act like a half tank means time to fill up, and at a quarter tank, I'm on the reserve tank. Of all the problems I've had with cars the nearly 50 years I've been driving, replacing one 13 year old mechanical fuel pump that was leaking has been the extent of my mechanical fuel related problems.
(I did have the fuel line freeze the winter we had 10 below for days, and near zero for about a week, but that was just sheer stupidity on my part, forgetting to add some gas treatment every few years, and especially before such a major freezing event, since over time, not doing that likely means some water in the gas and my car was a good 10 years old at the time. I think retiring made me just a lot more relaxed about such things...

Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.