Martinjmpr
New member
There is no place on US 50 where gas stations are more than 110 miles apart so there is no need to do this. I drove this exact route in June pulling a trailer. Filled up in Fallon, topped off in Austin (110 miles), sailed through Eureka (70 miles) and ended up in Ely (76 miles.)
And that's just the major towns. There was at least one gas station that was open on a Sunday afternoon in between Fallon and Austin, and I'm pretty sure there was one between Eureka and Ely.
To the OP: What I do is fill to three "stops": Fill the tank until it stops, give it a few seconds to let it percolate down into the tank, then squeeze again until it stops, pause a few seconds, and do that one more time. If you want consistent measurements, always fill the same way and (if possible) try and use the same pump.
If you have aftermarket tires, you will also need to correct for the tire size. For example, lets say you are running 265/75/16s, that's a bigger tire than stock. That means for each turn of the wheels, you're actually going a bit farther.
Some people try to calculate the nominal difference in tire size but to me it's easier to just get a decent GPS with a trip meter function, then set one of your trip meters to 0, and set the GPS trip meter to 0, and drive for about 100 miles. When it's done, divide the GPS mileage by the odometer mileage, and that will give you a conversion factor (so, if the GPS says you went 102 miles and the odo says you went 98, 102/98 = 1.040.) When you fill up, multiply your odometer mileage by the conversion factor before you divide by the gallons used to fill, and you will have a more accurate MPG reading.
So a typical fill up might go like this: You drive 270 miles until the low fuel light comes on (the one on my '99 would typically come on between 230 and 280 miles.) Let's say you've driven 264 miles when you go to fill it up. 264 miles x your conversion factor of 1.040 = 274.56 miles actually driven. If you take 15.1 gallons that = 18.18 MPG, which is pretty respectable for a 3rd gen. If you had not applied the conversion and just divided 264 by 15.1, your calculated MPG would have been 17.48.
BTW, I see you live in OR. The complication there is that you are not allowed to pump your own gas, so you are having your gas pumped by a pump jockey who probably will stop it after the first 'click.' Also, from my recollection, large parts of OR are very hilly. Lots of uphills and short trips will cause your MPG to plummet. Nothing you can do about that, it's just the way it is when you live in a mountainous area. Ditto if you live in a major metropolitan area and have a lot of stop-and-go traffic. :shrug:
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