<VV> Late fuel gage

Tony Underwood tony.underwood at cox.net
Wed Jul 21 08:05:50 EDT 2010


At 01:19 AM 7/20/2010, J R Read_HML wrote:
  Some will have 3 or 5 left (close
>enough) when the needle hits E.





...still pondering a "past-E" 5 gallon reserve in a tank that only 
holds about 13 gallons give or take, according to the reflections of 
the masses, which brings up another question:


Just how much fuel does a typical Corvair fuel tank actually 
hold?   I *know* what the books say.  The same books also claim other 
specs that are wrong.  ;)

I hear people say 14 gallons but I've never been able to get more 
than a little over 12.5 gallons into anything, and that's filling a 
DRY tank.   The '60 tank won't hold more than a smidge over 11 
gallons and it's been done twice, once after brazing a hole to rid it 
of a leak and once after fixing the sender, filled it afterwards each 
time just to see how much it would hold (at different gas stations), 
and each time it took just a bit over 11 gallons to fill it.

Likewise the '62 ragtop that just recently got a fresh tank and 
rebuilt sender, and filling it took *Less* than 13 gallons, in fact 
not a lot over 12 and that includes the filler neck.

No, there weren't any dents in the tank.  ;)



By the way:

Has anyone seen that news story from a year or so ago about bogus gas 
pumps that lie about the quantity of fuel they dispense?   Some specs 
were listed that showed that as many as 20% of gas pumps will 
actually pump less fuel than they show on the meter, although it's 
not made clear as to whether it's by "design" (pun intentional) or 
simple wear or calibration error.   The organization doing the actual 
testing (running around with containers that accurately shows the 
quantity of contents) said that it was interesting that NONE of the 
pumps anywhere ever pumped MORE fuel than indicated, that any errors 
always ended up being LESS.

What's more, many pumps that were found to be inaccurate were in fact 
actually accurate up to the first 5 gallons, after which they started 
a curve downward in quantity actually pumped.  This was a government 
sponsored test of random stations and one-stop fuel resources in 
various regions across the nation.  It was a rather interesting news story...

The consensus at the end of the story was that in order to be "safe" 
you should buy fuel in 5 gallon increments to get past the pumps that 
start fudging after 5 gallons.   I've been doing that myself, just 
for the heluvit and I keep records and my fuel mileage never seems to 
vary other than with seasonal gas blends and, of all things, 
weather.   More on that later...



tony..   


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