Help please! Need advise. Thank you ahead of time.

[nao57]

Question for you others;

I had something very strange happen recently. I went to fill up my tank. I then drove about 50 miles. My minivan gets 20 mpg, and it holds 20 gallons in the gas station. My 20 gallon tank had dropped down almost 8 gallons when I had only gone about 50 miles. It shouldn't have dropped that much. Basically the gas guage dropped enormously fast.

I work from home most the time also; so this means that I'm driving very little. This makes me think that I had gas stolen; like someone siphoned gas from my car.

...But after I thought that I went to a different gas station, and filled up. Then did my drive for the week, which was like 24 miles. I came home and my gas meter in the car had barely changed. It was noticeably much less gas used, where the gas from before dropped a lot but all came from a different gas station. It looks like it didn't have the problem from the gas from the second gas station.

Because I don't commute to work, my mileage used per month is usually literally less than 140 miles; this is why I noticed it so fast on the original problem of the gas gauge moving so much.

...This makes me think that maybe that 1 gas station might be selling gas that's diluted with water? How often does this happen? In theory it could happen.

But I want to ask also how do you tell and identify an event of someone siphoning your gas compared with a gas station selling dilluted water? And if it was gas sold with water diluted in it, wouldn't the symptom of that look like the gas guage dropping faster than it should?

Thanks for any insight on this.

 

[tlcmurphy]

If there was a lot of water mixed in with the gas, your car wouldn’t run and you’d need to get it serviced. I used to drive a minivan, I’d swear I could watch the gauge drop while driving surface streets in traffic

It’s possible you had gas siphoned by someone if you don’t have a locking gas cap, but that would be a lot of work for a crook…

 

[catballou]

Question for you others;

I had something very strange happen recently. I went to fill up my tank. I then drove about 50 miles. My minivan gets 20 mpg, and it holds 20 gallons in the gas station. My 20 gallon tank had dropped down almost 8 gallons when I had only gone about 50 miles. It shouldn't have dropped that much. Basically the gas guage dropped enormously fast.

I work from home most the time also; so this means that I'm driving very little. This makes me think that I had gas stolen; like someone siphoned gas from my car.

...But after I thought that I went to a different gas station, and filled up. Then did my drive for the week, which was like 24 miles. I came home and my gas meter in the car had barely changed. It was noticeably much less gas used, where the gas from before dropped a lot but all came from a different gas station. It looks like it didn't have the problem from the gas from the second gas station.

Because I don't commute to work, my mileage used per month is usually literally less than 140 miles; this is why I noticed it so fast on the original problem of the gas gauge moving so much.

...This makes me think that maybe that 1 gas station might be selling gas that's diluted with water? How often does this happen? In theory it could happen.

But I want to ask also how do you tell and identify an event of someone siphoning your gas compared with a gas station selling dilluted water? And if it was gas sold with water diluted in it, wouldn't the symptom of that look like the gas guage dropping faster than it should?

Thanks for any insight on this.

If you have water in your gasoline, your vehicle will sput and sputter and run terribly.

 

[nao57]

If you have water in your gasoline, your vehicle will sput and sputter and run terribly.

Well you are right. It would do that if there was enough of it. But couldn't they have figured out how to reduce it to ... just small enough that you couldn't get caught? Or use something else instead of water that's a volume filler also?

I'm just asking, not disagreeing with you. Its a natural follow up process to sort of think about a question in more than 1 stage.

And thank you both for responding.

 

[Stravager]

Not sure on any of your other questions, but any amount of water would can cause lots of issues - some vehicle models have problems even in the rain or puddles on the road.
It's not likely to be water that they're cutting the gas with but you might have a higher ethanol content in one gas station vs another. Alternatively, check under your car when it's been parked for a while for any signs of leaks. And for sure invest in a locking gas cap if you can, if your vehicle is the kind that you don't have to press any buttons to open the gas hatch for.

 

[catballou]

Well you are right. It would do that if there was enough of it. But couldn't they have figured out how to reduce it to ... just small enough that you couldn't get caught? Or use something else instead of water that's a volume filler also?

I'm just asking, not disagreeing with you. Its a natural follow up process to sort of think about a question in more than 1 stage.

And thank you both for responding.

I don't believe water would make your gas tank empty quickly.
It doesn't take much water to make your car run poorly.

We're you driving into the wind?
My vehicle gets 20 mpg driving into a strong headwind, 31 on a normal day.

 

[Coops Dad]

Either the pump was wildly inaccurate OR you had a gas thief. There's nothing that could be added to fuel which would cause it to use that much volume. The engine's management computer wouldn't allow the system to push 5x the amount of gas without throwing up a "check engine" light or going into limp mode.

So the pump SAID it dispensed more than it did and you didn't eyeball the gauge until later and assumed you used a ton of fuel, OR someone used a redneck fuel card (siphon) and stole your gas.

One thing to be aware of is that thieves have been drilling holes in car's plastic gas tanks and draining the gas that way; keep an eye on the underside of the car next time you fuel to make sure your tank is still sound.

 

[Coops Dad]

And back-of-napkin calculations figure that you lost about 5 gallons (8 gallons used for 50 miles in a car that gets 20mlg). So one of your neighborhood delinquents risked getting shot over $13 worth of gas

 

[nao57]

I don't believe water would make your gas tank empty quickly.
It doesn't take much water to make your car run poorly.

We're you driving into the wind?
My vehicle gets 20 mpg driving into a strong headwind, 31 on a normal day.

Thank you both for the thoughts.

Since getting gas at the other gas station instead of the first one it seems to have improved on the gas mileage. It shouldn't be like that.

I'll take a look at the wind idea. That's interesting too.

...

 

[nao57]

Either the pump was wildly inaccurate OR you had a gas thief. There's nothing that could be added to fuel which would cause it to use that much volume. The engine's management computer wouldn't allow the system to push 5x the amount of gas without throwing up a "check engine" light or going into limp mode.

So the pump SAID it dispensed more than it did and you didn't eyeball the gauge until later and assumed you used a ton of fuel, OR someone used a redneck fuel card (siphon) and stole your gas.

One thing to be aware of is that thieves have been drilling holes in car's plastic gas tanks and draining the gas that way; keep an eye on the underside of the car next time you fuel to make sure your tank is still sound.

WOW. That's so crazy and wasteful to not just steal the gas but ruin their tank. :S I'll pay better attention to that too. I didn't see that when I looked last. But I didn't know that's how they did it. I thought they did it with the hose and siphon method still...

It would be hard to deal with a gas tank acting that way.

...

ANd... I didn't think about the idea that a pump might say its giving you more gas than it actually did. Is that idea pretty common?

...

Thank you very much.