To have run the petrol down to 40 miles left

[Baby3or]

I recently drove 115 miles on a motorway back to London suburbs. I was watching the petrol number the whole way (it gives it in miles left to go before it’s empty) and at 70 I was considering stopping for petrol (lots of places on the motorway and then lots of places in city suburbs on the way to our house). I decided not to stop as baby was asleep and also our older child was keen to get home after a long journey.

we live less than a mile from a big supermarket with a petrol station and also plenty of other places to fill up.

husband had a go at me saying ‘what would I have done if we had run out of petrol / how had I let myself get in that situation’ I said I was fully aware how much was left and I made a decision not to refuel as on balance it was low but not empty.

AIBU??

I drove about 10 miles on the M25 with 0 miles left. I won’t lie, I was expecting to run out at any minute and was stressing!

Surely you are responsible enough to drive and look after children, you are responsible enough to ensure you don’t run out of fuel.

I always used to run down my petrol tank and the damage the sediment and debris caused cost me a couple of thousand to repair. So now I do my best to never quite get as far as the warning coming on.

I like to time mine so it does the 'need more petrol' ding as close to the petrol station as I can. My aim is to ding as I drive onto the forecourt, I was mere yards away from that happening once!

I got stuck on the motorway today and my petrol gauge showed 15 miles left - 12 miles from home, 11 miles from the petrol station. After queuing for nearly an hour, the gauge had dropped to 10, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the LO FUEL. I got to the petrol station fine.

Who does your dh think he is telling you off for letting the fuel go town to 40 miles?!?

The opposite is true. Regularly running the tank low can cause any debris in the bottom of it to damage the fuel pump and filter.

Tbh the only reason I try not to go under 50 miles left is I drive a very old car and there will be crud in the bottom of the tank I'd rather not block my injectors with

YANBU!

I'm not filling the car up until the light comes on (30 miles in my car)

Exceptions are:

• big journey coming up
• if we're on holiday somewhere rural or if we're abroad. Then we have a "fill it up at half a tank" rule.

The day we moved from London to our new home in a rural city, the fuel light came on. The car details said we had 55 miles to go. I wanted to fill up as we were 30 miles from our new house. My husband said no because he didn't want to fill up at countryside prices when there's a perfectly good massive supermarket with supermarket fuel prices 2 minutes from the house.

We agreed that if we ran out of fuel he would have to walk to the nearest filling station and get the petrol. It became a game. We got home with 10 miles left. I've never run it down that far since, but it's good to know I can get 40 miles out of the car once the fuel light comes on.

I got down to 2 miles once because I got lost going to the next village for petrol :)

Luckily I live at the bottom of a steep-sided valley so I turned the car around and rolled almost the whole way home!

Mine runs down to zero and still has 39 -40 left. I'm not suggesting it's a good thing but equally it's not the end of the earth.

I used to be a bit blasé about filling my car up until one day it went from saying 65 miles of fuel left to completely empty from one side of a roundabout to another. I was about a mile from home, DS was just a baby, it was peeing down with rain, dark and I didn’t have a coat or the buggy. My then DH refused to leave work to help so I had to sit in the car for a couple of hours until he’d finished work and gone via a petrol station to get enough fuel for me to limp home. Never gone below 1/4 tank since.

Not sure that being a controlling dickhead is something to be proud of

I have absolutely no idea why but in my head, 30 is the safe number.

I quite regularly run it down to 5 miles. It makes dh nearly shit a brick. But I’ve been driving for nearly 30 years and have yet to run out of fuel even once.

What an idiot. In the situation you describe this is a non-issue such I’m wondering how it even made it into the conversation, but then saw your other updates.

Dickhead. Hope you’re ok OP.

That’s so lovely to read. Things are truely shit at the moment and your message meant a lot

Christ alive he'd hate me. I've rolled into a petrol station on last gasp fumes before now.

I was going to ask if he's always so much of a dick anxious about very minor things but I've skim read more of your posts now so my question is answered. As you were.

A colleague ran out of petrol on the way to work doing just that, those counters aren't always completely accurate. The RAC guy who came to aid said cold weather particularly impacts their accuracy.

How and why did he even know how many miles the car said when you filled it up?

I once had to freewheel onto a petrol station forecourt with zero petrol left 😂. The timing was perfect. That was unintended and a hire car though, I usually refuel mine at around 25-30 miles.

The only time this would annoy me is if DH did it knowing I had to leave ridiculously early the next morning for something further than 40 miles away.
I regularly get down to ----

You’re right. I am definitely distracting myself by enjoying the replies.

I definitely could start a thread but if I told the truth it would be endless LTBs. it would be sound advice but I would feel so overwhelmed. I did leave once but I came back as it was actually 3 times worse than staying.
I think posters would be frustrated with me. I’ve posted a few times about different issues in the last 6 months and NC every time as lots of them had outing details.

Worst was having to freewheel down the hill on to the petrol station forecourt, that was cutting it rather fine. Generally I fill up at about 20 miles left!

@DreamingInPhosphorescence
SNAP!😊

I regularly run down to 10 miles on the dash (most cars have more left in the tank than the dashboard shows as well)
although I did shit myself recently when I had only 4 miles left when I got home and the nearest petrol station (2miles away) was shut and I had to run on fumes to get to the next one!
so now I do try and leave at least 10-20 miles worth in the tank by the time I’m home