That didn't go as planned

"shop-teacher" (shop-teacher)
09/04/2020 at 22:27 • Filed to: Two wheels out of gas

After work this afternoon, I took the long way home. I was on my way to the has station ... And I didn’t make it. I had to walk it the last mile+.

I’m 39, and that’s the first time I’ve ever run out of gas.

The Hooligan’s only real flaw, is the non-functional gas gauge. I really need to fix that this winter.

DISCUSSION (40)

wafflesnfalafel > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 22:38

everybody needs to run out of gas once in their life, congrats sir.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 22:38

My old Vespas never had one, I had ye ol gas level stick to dip in there.

smobgirl > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 22:39

My high school car had a broken gas gauge and I was terrible at remembering to reset the trip meter for reference. Fortunately if you took corners fast enough you could feel it sputter as it got low...unfortunately my dad never learned that trick and I paid the price when he ran out while driving it.

facw > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 22:46

Yeah, I don’t think I could go without as gas gauge. I’d be stopping to fill the thing all the time to be on the safe side.

A friend of mine once owned a Mer k ur Scorpio with a busted gauge, but it also had a functional trip computer, so he had miles to zero, which is basically just as good.

onlytwowheels > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 23:00

I’ve run out of gas three time .

On e time at a stop light across the street from a gas station I was headed to. I had just picked my Fiero Formula at the dealership, less than 2 miles away. They had been driving the car, 27 additional miles on it. The fuel gauge was 2 bars above E when it stopped running.

The 2nd time I was on the interstat e doing about 70 mph on my 1200 Sportster with the factory 2.25 gallon tank. I t started to sputter so I flipped the petcock to reserve. One quarter mile later it’s sputtering again. Tank is nearly dry. Pushed it nearly two miles uphill. Normally reserve would get me 12- 15 miles.

Final time. Riding my 800 lb+ Royal Star 1300. Its la te, near idnight, I’ m 130 m iles from home on Hwy 101 north heading for I 80. I rem em ber c omm enting to m yself the remarkable fuel economy I must getting because the fuel light had not come on. It usually glowed around 145 miles, telling me I had on gallon and signaling me to switch to reserve. I had nearly 180 miles at this point, and no light, fuel miser it must be. The motorcycle starts to sputter, oh crap, I switch to reserve and it continues to sputter the dies. A handful of attempts to fire it and nothing. Tra ffic is not good, I am on a very narrow shoulder of an elevated portion of the roadway. Luckily, CHP comes along and escorts me while I push to the nearest ramp. There was a hotel at the bottom of that, which is where I spent the night. I called a good friend in the area that I had worked with and he brought me a gallon of gas on the back of his motorcycle.

Dash-doorhandle-6 cyl none the richer > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 23:02

I have run out of gas at least 4 times. I have also gone to small town S ask kno cked on a random door at dusk, and by the nature of exremely small towns, located the gas station owner and gotten gas from a closed station on a sunday night, twice. I complain about living here, but folks are EXCEPTIONALLY neighbourly here.

shop-teacher > Dash-doorhandle-6 cyl none the richer
09/04/2020 at 23:05

That's pretty cool!

shop-teacher > smobgirl
09/04/2020 at 23:05

D'oh!

shop-teacher > facw
09/04/2020 at 23:06

This scooter has a tripometer. I usually get 100 miles to a tank, but ran out with 96 on the trip. Guess I better start filling up at 90.

shop-teacher > wafflesnfalafel
09/04/2020 at 23:07

Well, this was the vehicle to do it with then.

shop-teacher > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)
09/04/2020 at 23:07

I almost made it ... Whoops!

shop-teacher > onlytwowheels
09/04/2020 at 23:18

Yipes! That's scary. Glad it turned out ok.

Noodles > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 23:19

That sucks man. I've done it twice in a car. My bike doesn't have a fuel gauge. It has a low light, but I just put gas in it every 100 miles. I don't think I've ever used 3/4 of a tank

shop-teacher > Noodles
09/04/2020 at 23:21

Up until today, I have also put gas in every 100 miles ... But I had 96 on the tripometer when it sputtered out. Guess I better start filling up every 90!

This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 23:24

I’ve never run a street vehicle out of gas, but I did run out of electricity once and had to push the Raptor with my kid and supplies in the trailer something like 15km home. Had enough juice for the trip as planned but it turned out they were pouring concrete and had just done the sidewalks where the route through the woods exited back onto the street, so I had to turn around and detour. Truth be told the pack had enough to move the bike without me on it, so it technically did most of the work while I walked along side of it, but it still sucked.

smobgirl > Dash-doorhandle-6 cyl none the richer
09/04/2020 at 23:31

Oh wow. That’s incredible!

DipodomysDeserti > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 23:33

Did that while riding in my neighborhood. First time I had flipped on the reserve to find it diesn’t leave a whole lotta room for error.

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > smobgirl
09/04/2020 at 23:35

I had a David Tracy-level rusty ‘76 Volvo 244, and the only thing on the dash that worked was the temp gauge. It would sputter & hiccup on right-hand turns when it was very low on fuel. I never ran out of gas, but there were a couple fill-ups early on where I thought, damn, I didn’t know it held that much!

I got stopped on the interstate in it once. When the trooper asked me if I had any idea how fast I was going, I said no & told him why. He laughed and asked me to pace him until he took the next exit, so I’d know what 65 felt like. (This was almost 30 years ago, on a stretch of I-89 in Vermont, so it wasn’t unusual to be the only car on the road for miles at a time. If I could have paced another motorist, I would have.)

Noodles > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 23:35

I often forget to reset the trip meter. Then it turns into a paranoid math test.

onlytwowheels > shop-teacher
09/04/2020 at 23:42

Learned I had 2 issues with the motorcycle that night. Low fuel level sensor was in/ op and tube on petcock had come off, so always on reserve. Both repaired under warranty. But a scary night that ended without injury and teaches a lesson isn’t a terrible thing.

T rust the math. The numbers do not lie.

Dash-doorhandle-6 cyl none the richer > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja:
09/04/2020 at 23:45

was picturing you pushing a Ford Raptor for a second there.

This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: > Dash-doorhandle-6 cyl none the richer
09/04/2020 at 23:53

Now THAT would have been a long 15km, especially with the hills I had to travel that day.

smobgirl > Dead_Elvis, Inc.
09/04/2020 at 23:55

That was cool of the officer! My speedo worked about 75% of the time in this car

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > smobgirl
09/05/2020 at 00:01

I’ve only had a few interactions with the Vermont State Police, and they were all positive, if not quite like that. Always a plus if you can get a laugh out of them . Can’t say so much about any local PD or the few other state patrols I’ve been stopped by.

I did manage to get everything on the dash working before I drove that thing across the country, as I had zero interest in a 3000 mile experiment.

Dash-doorhandle-6 cyl none the richer > shop-teacher
09/05/2020 at 00:24

smobgirl > Dead_Elvis, Inc.
09/05/2020 at 00:26

Hah. Mine got scrapped. $200 car with no maintenance or repairs for two years since we were only set on postponing the inevitable.

Most of my police interactions have been in not-at-fault accidents so they were usually pretty friendly except some local cops in Utah. They flipped their shit about me having a car with Utah plates and a Colorado license (because rental, you fucking idiots) and then because I didn’t possess the registration for the car (because, again, rental). They would not accept the rental contract as proof that I did not own the car, nor would they run the plates. Thankfully the staties showed up and things got much friendlier when they saw the driving record of the woman who ran into me.

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > smobgirl
09/05/2020 at 00:54

That Volvo got sent to the junkyard shortly after I got to Seattle. I don’t remember what I brought it to a garage for, but they figured it was too rusty to put up on the lift safely. I got $76 for it from a salvage place that only dealt with Swedish cars.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > shop-teacher
09/05/2020 at 07:17

Few! For a minute there, I’d thought something was broken! I’ve never run out of gas either, but I’m PREEETTTTYYY good at knowing what’s left in the Accent’s tank (though my gas gauge works). It’s a 45L tank and the most I filled into it was like...44.6L...I don’t usually l et it get anywhere near that low though.

shop-teacher > Dash-doorhandle-6 cyl none the richer
09/05/2020 at 08:04

Me too! I was like, "Are you Superman?"

shop-teacher > Dead_Elvis, Inc.
09/05/2020 at 08:09

This scooter has Vermont plates (I live in Illinois) , because I bought it without a title and Vermont doesn’t care. I got a call fro m Pam at the Montpelier DMV office, because there was a problem with my application. Pam was awesome, and she helped me straighten it out right quick.

I’ve never been to. Vermont, but that kind of made me want to move there.

shop-teacher > smobgirl
09/05/2020 at 08:10

How have they never dealt with someone driving a rental car before? Idiots.

shop-teacher > Noodles
09/05/2020 at 08:11

I've only done that once. Truth be told, I ALMOST tan out of gas that time. It started sputtering pulling into the gas station.

shop-teacher > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
09/05/2020 at 08:14

Nah. Actually it really seemed to like the BP premium I put in there, it’s running fabulously.

I did once put 24.3 gallons into the 25 gallon tank of my truck.

shop-teacher > onlytwowheels
09/05/2020 at 08:14

Truth!

smobgirl > shop-teacher
09/05/2020 at 11:28

It was impressive. The kid was barely 20 and looked like a member of the Hitler Youth. He very well could have had zero personal experience with rental cars but you’d think they would cover that in training.

shop-teacher > smobgirl
09/05/2020 at 11:56

Those young chest-thumpy cops are usually the most difficult to work with. They have authority, but they're too young to know their ass from a hole in the ground.

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > shop-teacher
09/05/2020 at 15:17

I noticed a VT plate on that in one of your other posts, figured it had something to do with the lax registration requirements there . It’s convenient that despite Vermont’s mandatory annual safety inspection for all vehicles, registration & the ability to renew is not tied to having a current inspection sticker (goes in the top center of the windshield, in front of the rearview, or on the left fork lower for cycles; I’m not sure where it would end up on a scoot like yours, but someplace on the lower front left ). I never bothered having my bikes inspected when I still lived there, but you can expect to get pulled over in a heartbeat if you pass a cop with an expired sticker on your windshield.

shop-teacher > Dead_Elvis, Inc.
09/05/2020 at 19:30

I had no idea they did safety inspections.

They’ve definitely found a hole in the market for supplying license plates to out of state people who live in states with tougher registration laws. Illinois isn’t even that hard, but the no title thing is a big problem here. Knowing the Vermont trick, I actively search for scoots with no title, because they’re significantly cheaper. I only paid $600 for this one. It had 858 miles on it, and the only real flaw is the non-operational fuel gauge.

Pat Pfeiffer > shop-teacher
09/05/2020 at 19:43

I ran the scrambler out of a gas a couple months ago. No gas gauge, and I had forgot to look in the tank before I ran to a nearby town for a sidejob. But it gets like 50mpg, so whatever, it will be fine. Ran out of gas halfway home, flipped it to reserve, kicked a few times, and the kicker jammed down. Luckily a friend that I had just made hours earlier that day was driving past, and gave me a ride home. That bike was such a pig that the two of us (I'm 5'5 145lbs and make him look TINY) couldn't get it in his truck without the help of a passing farmer

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > shop-teacher
09/05/2020 at 19:50

It’s a fairly thorough safety inspection now that the state revamped the process a couple years back . Inspections had been & continue to be performed by private garages, not a state agency ; any that wanted to continue performing inspections & issuing the stickers had to buy a state-issued tablet (and presumably associated software) for documentation & data logging. Prior to that it was easy to find places that, for an extra Jackson or three, would slap a sticker on shitboxes so sketchy even David Tracy would reject them.

Emissions testing doesn’t happen outside of Chittenden County, IIRC.