Behemoth wrote:seppuku wrote:Hmm, very strange. Is this a pattern or something you observed once? I fuel at Shell nearly all the time and they have never given me a reason to think they are cutting corners. I always fill up my tank though - mostly because it makes it easy to monitor my fuel economy.
You are not being economical. Filling your tank to monitor the fuel economy? What you are doing is burning more fuel...
How is that? Do you mean to talk about increased mass? A tank full of petrol raises my car's overall mass by less than 3%, how much difference do you reckon that makes to fuel economy? What do you have to say about vaporization losses that occur to a greater extent in mostly empty tanks? My opinion is that such factors have such a small impact on fuel economy that they're not worth obsessing about. Some people won't even give their neighbor a lift because they think it will hurt their fuel economy! And by the way the reason I monitor my fuel consumption so closely is just so I make sure I can explain it. If I drive aggressively, which I do sometimes, I expect to burn more gas. If I am easy on the accelerator, which I often am, I expect to burn less. If that is not happening then I investigate. This knowledge is more important to me than the money I might save and the time I might waste by fueling up a quarter tank every time.
PS: Fuel economy for me is not the be all and end all of driving, I care for the fun too and I appreciate that it comes at the expense of spending more on petrol. But so what? It's the same with the rest of life - win some lose some.
Learn first to treat your time as you would your money, then treat your money as you do your time.