Bingo. Thank you Jon for being more succinct than I was...
jon@dakota-truck.net wrote:
> andy levy <andy-dml@levyclan.us> wrote:
> [...]
> : I don't see how you can consider gallons left in the tank with the
> : needle on E as "unusable" gas. The fuel pump is still pumping the gas to
> : the engine. The truck doesn't shut off. It doesn't drive itself to a gas
> : station. No one ever claimed that having the needle on E means that the
> : tank is bone-dry - if DC did that, owners would be stranded on the road
> : daily. I definitely didn't push my truck to the gas station to put that
> : 21.23 gallons into it - so I would say that at most, you might have half
> : a gallon of "unusable" gas in there at that point.
>
>
> I can see what Barry is saying - basically that the "empty" indication
> comes "too soon" on the 22 gallon trucks. While it is true that when
> the gauge reads E, you don't have to get gas right away, most people are
> going to fill up. If you fill up every time the needle hits E, the extra
> gas in the tank is only useful as a "reserve" in an emergency perhaps; if
> you fill up as soon as the gauge reads E, you might as well have the smaller
> tank for all the good the larger one is doing for you - its 30lbs of extra
> gas that you're dragging around with you but never actually "using".
>
> To make the example a bit more extreme, assume that the gauge
> read E when the tank was still 3/4 full. That would be a pretty
> useless gauge. Its the same thing, just to a lesser extent, to have it
> read E when there are 5 gallons left in the tank. Its just not as
> useful of an indicator as it should be, and the net result is that
> the vast majority of people are going to be filling up somewhere around
> 80 miles before it is actually necessary. Having the low fuel light
> come on once there is perhaps 2 gallons left is fine, but to have
> a gas gauge which is so wildly inaccurate would be pretty annoying.
> Sure, you can always say to yourself, "ok, I've got about 80 miles
> left once the needle hits E", but who wants to deal with that? Even
> when you know reality is different than what the gauge is telling
> you, its still extra stress and something else to think about; might
> as well just fill up and be done with it. I'd much prefer to simply
> have an accurate gauge; garbage in, garbage out - we shouldn't have
> to be second guessing our instruments.
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 01 2007 - 14:53:53 EST