Until a moronic Ohioan changed everything, I had planned to take time late this summer to drive to Newfoundland, a distance of almost 6,000KM round trip. I’m not so sure I want to do that now that I have driven here from Edmonton, but anyway.

I thought that since I’d be going all that way, I might as well make a little detour that would involve getting the chance to spend a few Euro. I mean, by the time you get the Newfoundland, all you have to do is drop the car, get on a pedestrian-only ferry, and voila, you’re in a quaint French town!

Have any of my readers visited the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia?

When I was out running errands on Saturday, my first stop was a gas station since I left with the needle way too close to the red empty line. Like on the way to Brooks, the gauge moved from ‘you have gas’ to ‘you are running on fumes’ very quickly. But unlike on that trip, a light saying ‘check gauge’ came on.

Interesting.

I got my fuel then pulled over to check the manual. As a side note, like with my Accent, I have a fully tricked out ride so all the little extras in the manual apply to me. 🙂

‘Check gauge’ could mean:

1) engine temp is too hot (nope)

2) low oil (nope)

3) fuel tank near empty (ha ha!)

I did some research and learned that that light should come on when you have about 3 gallons of gas left in the tank. Hmm. I did the math and when I took on fuel in Brooks, I had about 2 gallons of gas left, but the light did not come on.

So is my ‘check gauge’ light faulty or is my math faulty? I think I need to double check the capacity of my tank, but it looks like I have a 19.5 gallon tank according to what I can find online. I haven’t calculated my gas mileage, but the numbers on this US government page put it at 18 miles per gallon combined highway and city, which sounds about right. If that’s the case, when I landed in Brooks with 2 gallons in the tank expecting to stall at any second I could have probably done another 36 miles!

I’m not obsessed with my gas mileage, but I do like to know how far I can go when the gas gauge dips into the red. With my Accents, I knew I could do at least 30KM once the ‘check fuel’ gauge came on and I would find comfort in knowing this information for my Ranger. I want to find that sweet spot where I am taking on enough fuel to make the stop worthwhile without actually running on fumes.

I am amused by how the manual puts the worst case scenario at the top of the list for this gauge and then runs down to the least alarming one!