Breaking the fill-up habit

For fuel injected cars, the season blend doesn't make much difference. Winter blend is suppose to aid starting things with carbs in the cold. The problem with winter blend in the summer is evaporative emissions.

 

i made a huge mistake when we got home from florida on 03/15. filled up the next day and have only 25 miles on her.
i will have to burn off a good portion of 8 gallons by 11/15 to meet toyota's recommendation.

i'm hoping to have somewhere to go

 

I understand many are now computing gallons per month rather than the old method.

 

Yeah last fill up for me was 18 liters, and it'd been over two months.

 

Uh, what?? Oh, yeah, I kinda sorta remember now ...

No, I had zero problem, as it wasn't a calendar-based habit for me.

The Bank of Dad filled my Prius during my recent "essential work" shift at the family farm, helping keep our link in the national food supply chain operating. Otherwise, the last gas for any household vehicle was 3/20, the day after returning from our aborted ski & National Park sightseeing road trip when rippling pandemic closures shut everything down.

I'll be filling up the Subaru this week, not because it actually needs it, but only because a big pile of grocery store fuel points expire at month's end and can't be converted to other products. The other grocery chain where the spouse also builds up points, allows conversion to better use, e.g. grocery discounts.

 

I can't wait to retire.

 

Usual fill up every two weeks is now every two months. Unless the tank is near empty, I don't fill up. I do have ~10 gals of ethanol-free gas in jerry cans I bought end of spring, but I will probably go through that in the next 6-8 months for lawnmower, chainsaw, pressure washer, power auger, and gas tiller. I am thinking of buying a gas engine chipper shredder this summer, so that will also use some. I may have to buy some more before all the yard works are finished.

 

There is a very clear remedy for that.

 

When we got the opportunity to break that habit we had no problem whatsoever.
Not only did I enjoy not running that errand, I saved money by not buying as much junk food.
I also drastically cut down on my ‘bad at math’ taxes (lottery tickets).

 

I still drive as much, if not a little more than before the dampanic hit....but I've lived in places where things like hurricanes and earthquakes can make it a little tougher to GET a gallon of gas....and June the oneth is less than a week away.....and we've already had one named storm this year.

So...
I look at the "filling up" task a little differently.

Gas weighs about 6 pounds a gallon.
I was looking for a more Commander Spocky type value but it REALLY does vary quite a bit.
I think I read where US specs are between 5.9 and 6.5 pounds, and the Googles sometimes will tell you it's 6.073.

This might lead somebody that does not drive very much to only want to haul one or two gallons of the stuff around in your car, but I look at things a little differently.
All of those air bags and side impact beams, weigh a little bit too.

I'm required by my beloved company to always keep my Prius over half full......a regulation that I regularly flout.
I'm only a stickler about ALWAYS having enough fuel to get back to the barn.
However (comma!) my personal vehicles very rarely fall below half, and I have a tactical fuel reserve that will allow me to leave the house on a minute's notice with a full bag of gas.

Some habits are hard to break....

 

Perhaps growing up dirt poor has more to do with me keeping the tanks full, the shelves always stocked and a very comfortable nest egg. YMMV

 

Where I live, you ALWAYS keep the tank half-full -- well -- sometimes in the heat of summer, I may let it slip down to a quarter-tank, but NEVER from October through March.

Never know when you might get "land-locked" on a backwoods road and, especially in the winter, that gasoline might mean life or not.
kris

 

Another reason for filling when it dips below 1/2: if you're trying to keep an unbroken record of fillups. I don't want someone "putting in $10's worth". The horror.

 

I'll put in such amounts when I know the gas a ways ahead is much cheaper, like crossing from Western to Eastern Washington, or from British Columbia into Washington or Alberta.

But since the "someone" is always me, and I always record it into the logbook too, no fuel or MPG tracking gets missed. Though some "MPG tracking tanks" have been super long, as the tank tracking trip meter does not get reset for part-tank additions, only for true fillups.

Sometimes it is best to not realize just how poor you were until long after.

But when it leaves you with the skills to grow, harvest, can, and butcher your own food supply and build and repair your own stuff, you might not have been as poor as it sometimes appears.

 

I always rely primarily on the odometer values. I do reset trip meter, but only for feedback and checking.

 

I too record both, also for cross checking. And the fuel logbook is also the maintenance logbook, so date and odometer readings are mandatory.

So that means the trip meter is really an optional item. I still record it for convenience, to ease certain scans down the columns with less mental math. Later reviews have found errors in each, at least odo errors are non-accumulating. But if someone is minimizing the amount of recorded detail, leaving out essentially redundant detail, then the trip meter is the one to skip.