Before you heckle me - no I’m not stupid, and under normal circumstances I usually would turn the car off. In this particular instance, however, my car battery died because I was away for 6 weeks, and there’s not enough gas for me to take it on the highway and get to where I need to go tomorrow (after I try jumping the car). Since if i turn the engine off there’s a large likelihood that the car will die and won’t turn back on again, turning the car off while I fill my tank isn’t a very viable option. Can I get away with it one time, or will I ruin my engine or blow up my car?
If it makes a difference - 2020 Land Rover discover (sport). If that’s not viable, what are my other options for charging my car up enough with only <30 miles in the tank so that I’ll be able to also refuel my car without the battery going out?
Thanks!
I worked in Alaska for 5 years, in the winter if we didn’t have anywhere to plug in block heaters so the oil wouldn’t thicken up we used to leave the trucks running for months at a time. The rig used to have a guy who’s only job was to go around and fuel up all the running trucks and generators. Probably left a rental truck running for 15 straight weeks.
Out of curiosity what was the mileage of said trucks? That’s some amount of running time and must have eventually led to engine failure?
Normally pretty low, very few of the rentals I drove made it above 30k, the distances driven weren’t very far but the engine hours were really high. They were put in low idle and sometimes left for days without being moved and even if they were they were driven about 2 miles. Frozen brakes was always fun.
Is that the reason you used rental instead of buying them?
Imagine… You buy a pickup truck with 30k miles but everything is fucked because it has hundreds of thousands of hours. That’s like a yard dog truck, no miles but runs 24/7
They’d be diesel though no?
If I remember right (it’s been a few years and you have made me think) most things were gas so they could all be filled up from the same truck and there was never any confusion, they’d fill trucks/generators/light poles/heaters all from the same unit. You could get diesels but you’d have to drive them to a specific location or leave them somewhere to get filled up. So both diesels and gas trucks would be idling all winter.
That’s diesel and not gas. Huge difference. Diesels Flashpoint is ridiculously low.
Diesel fuel is much harder to ignite the vapers of than gasoline, not really a good comparison on the safety of it.
I live in anchorage was about to comment the same thing. Fairbanks, bush, or the slope?
On the slope, so we had a few of our own trucks but a bunch of Delta rentals every winter for exploration season. They would have 3000 hours after 4 months.
This is why if you’re buying a used diesel truck you should always check the drive and idle hours, not just the mileage.