From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Diesel?
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 00:50:29 -0400

Lon VanOstran wrote:
>
> LOCOMOTIVE2506 wrote:
>  If you have two fuel tanks you can suck one totally dry until the
> > engine starts to misfire before switching to the other tank.
>
> In this day of in-tank fuel pumps, this is terrible and expensive
> advice. These pumps use excess fuel for cooling, and running the tank
> dry can and will cost you a fuel pump. The fuel pump price is high
> enough to fill the tank several times. Don't do it.

Thank you.  You beat me to this one.  Pretty much guaranteed that
running an in-tank pump dry will burn it up.  Maybe not the first
time but it will.  And aside from burning the pump out, as the gas
level gets very low in the tank, sloshing sweeps all the settled out
crud into the pump wet well.  Does superb things to the pump.  And
the fuel filter.  Whereas a carbureted engine will give some warning
with a stopped up filter (missing at high speed, etc), an FI engine
just flat stops.  And if you're unlucky, the reserve pressure the
fuel pump is capable of will blow out the filter media and carry all
that crap to the fuel injectors.

> Lon, who can't get this through one daughter's head in spite of several
> hundred dollars worth of fuel pumps. (I don't fix them since the first
> one)

My father's the same way.  He does it so often in his old Broncco
that I mounted two jerry cans on the rear bumper so he'd not have to
walk.  One for when he runs out and one for the NEXT time cuz he
forgets to fill 'em.  He gets away with it there.  But he's smoked
two fuel pumps in my mother's Astrovan.  'Bout $500 parts & labor
each time.  I suspect that this is his passive-agressive response to
an overbearing wife, showing that she can't tell him what to do.
Sure is an expensive show!

I can't imagine this myself.  I get as nervous as a whore in church
whenever my gauge gets to 1/8.  I prefer to fill at 1/4.

John