A gas gauge in Wally’s old car? Don’t need it.

When you drive a 10-year old car, you should be prepared for things to go wrong occasionally.

You should maybe, but I’m not that kind of person. I’m more the kind who ignores any warning signs of danger and blithely plows ahead.

I’m told that all the warning lights on the dash of my old car come on when I start the engine to prove that they are not burnt out in case I ever need them. They then are supposed to go off. Several of mine stay on or go on and off at intervals.

I ignore them. Frankly, I don’t trust any of the lights too much.

But I have always been able to depend on my gas gauge for accuracy. If the needle was even a tiny bit above the empty line, it had gas. I relied heavily on that.

Until the other day when I was running along and the engine died. It couldn’t be empty, I thought, the needle still had a sliver of space above the empty mark. I was envisioning expensive repairs, but I thought maybe I would put some gas in first, just in case.

I called my wife and she took me to get some gas and the car started right up. I filled up and went about my business.

The balky gas gauge should have been a warning, but I drove around the area for a few days and never paid much attention.

I needed to go to St. Louis on an errand and headed off with the gas gauge reading full. It occurred to me that it probably should have fallen a bit, but as usual, I ignored the warning bells going off inside my head.

It was only as I coasted to a stop after going down the big hill on Illinois 15 at Alorton (luckily right by the truck stop) that I noticed the gauge was on empty. Apparently the gauge now only had two measurements, F and E, nothing in between.

So, I have a new gas gauge and it didn’t even cost me anything. It is the trip odometer on my instrument display.

I reset it to 0.0 when I fill up and drive until it reaches 200, which is the refill point, more or less. That is about 10 gallons of gas at 20 miles per gallon and gives me a cushion of almost five gallons which I will need since I am bound to forget to look at the odometer. I probably will see the gas gauge on F and think I am fine.

There are other potential pitfalls such as forgetting to reset the trip odometer or looking at the wrong trip odometer.

For some reason the car has two trip odometers, controlled by the same button. Press the little button and let go and you move back and forth between the two. Press the button and hold it and it resets the odometer you are looking at. I can’t imagine I won’t get the wrong one.

Since I can’t always be near a gas station when I drive, you’re bound to see me sometime trudging along a road, carrying a gas can. Give me a lift and don’t worry about laughing. It’s just part of what you get when you’re running on empty.

This story was originally published January 21, 2017 at 9:50 AM with the headline "A gas gauge in Wally’s old car? Don’t need it.."