Tank on Empty: Just How Far Can You Drive After the Gas Light Comes On?

I never tok the risk of driving for too long after the gas light comes on, but I did drive 10-15 miles on my Ford Focus. And the car manual says it possible to drive around 60 miles before the car runs out of gas completely.

I’m in the third category, but only because I’ve replaced a fuel pump due to running it dry. Then again, in my defense, I didn’t know the tank was empty. Fuel gauge and odometer didn’t work. Great idea just to see how far you can go, but only if you don’t want the labor of dropping a fuel tank, or paying some dude $400+ to do it. Though the general rule of thumb is 1.5 to 2 gallons are left once the light comes on.

I’ve never heard it called that.

Running on empty will only damage an in-tank fuel pump and only if you make a habit of it. Cheap cars like Volkswagens and Willys and Crosleys used to lack fuel gauges entirely, instead they had a reserve tank that held about half a gallon. You’d let the thing run dry, switch to the reserve tank, and go find a filling station.

I tried to add my Scooter to the site but they don’t seem to do any vehicles besides cars and trucks… but my Honda Ruckus ran dry after more than 20 miles. But it’s only a 1.3 gallon tank. The light comes on after a gallon is used so I guess I went 20 miles on .3 gallons. There was gas left I think the hill I had to stop on did me in.

Just to be clear, yeah, you can damage a fuel pump by running it dry, but the damage is only going to happen if you (really stupidly) continue to try to start the car after it has stalled. The in-tank pumps rely on fuel running though them to keep them cool. If you keep trying to start an out-of-gas car, you keep the pump running and it eventually overheats, ensuing a tow and an expensive repair. If you just ran the car out of gas and admitted defeat after the car died, the pump would be fine. Key thought: admit defeat and go hike for gas rather than trying to get it restarted on a dry tank.

The varied auto manuafacturers all have their own idea of the optimum “empty reserve” (an actual automotive engineering term) for their particular customers. Personally, I’d like a tank gauge to read right on F when it is full and right on E just before it sputters and dies, with accurate linear reading in between. Unfortunately, the greater public is frankly rather dim and are easily fooled into thinking the car gets better fuel economy if it takes *forver* to move off “F” and then takes 100 miles to finally die after E has reached. As a result, automotive engineers deliberately calibrate the pump sender units to read high when fuel, low when empty, and varying slope in between. All cars do this, but the more a car exhibits such goofy inaccurate behaviour, the dumber the automaker thinks its customers are. Like I said, all cars are different, but no automaker delivers truly accurate gauges. If your model goes forever on E, they think idiots are the primary buyers.

heh, immediately thought of Seinfeld too

@sid – nice response

I can get across town and back, sometimes twice.

I get an average of 50-60 in my 2003 Nissan Pathfinder. And this is not a vehicle you want to test that.

Wow, this is really useful for all those sneaky car hire firms that ask you to pay for a full tank and bring back empty. I can now leave them a good 40 miles less in the tank!