<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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