If you’re like many people, you wait until the last moment possible to fill up your tank with gasoline when it’s nearly empty. While this may be used as a strategy to save money, doing this can actually end up costing you more long-term.
In your car, the gasoline acts as a coolant for your electric fuel-pump motor. When there isn’t very much gasoline left in your tank, this lets the fuel-pump motor suck in air. This ultimately causes the pump to sustain wear and may cause it to prematurely and potentially fail. Needing to repair your fuel pump is a fix that could potentially end up costing you several hundred dollars to take care of.
One other risk you take when you don’t fill up your tank with gasoline is getting stranded, or even getting in an accident, when your car suddenly stops running. When you’re running low on gas, you also don’t know where you could be. For some, this happens on a deserted road, but for others it happens on a busy highway.
To keep your engine running like it should, and to reduce the risk that your car will suddenly stop running because it ran out of gas, always keep your gas tank at no less than ¼ of the way full. You should also plan on filling up your car at one of our locations before you go on a long trip, so that you don’t run out of gas if the ride is longer than you originally intended.