Hardware woes #3

[bellinghman]

It seems it never rains but it pours.

Friday last week, my PC lost its boot drive.
Monday this week, the monitor blew up on power-up
Today, the third hardware problem turned up, but not the PC for once.

On the way over to Silverstone this afternoon, we'd only gone a few miles when bellinghwoman remarked on a smell of petrol. It came and went for a bit, but after a bit I stopped in a lay-by and checked under the bonnet for anything wrong. Nothing obvious, but ... as we progressed, the petrol gauge was moving faster than was reasonable. About twice as fast.

We turned back for home, intending to go for her car and not risk mine running out of fuel ridiculously early.

By the time we got close to home, the petrol gauge seemed to be showing that I was getting about 60% of normal mileage. Not good, but the full tank would get us over to my mother's, so we turned round again and headed off again. And indeed, it was pretty consistent all the way there. By the time we reached out destination, the tank was down to 5/8ths.

And so I resigned myself to contacting the garage on Monday.

The odd thing was, on starting the car to head down to the Thai Tai in Brackley (by the way, uitlander, Alan says Hi), the fuel gauge shot back up to 6/8ths.

And wobbled around a bit.

And on coming back from an exceedingly nice Thai meal, it shot back up to the 6/8 again.

So, before leaving to come home, I decided to check the filler cap.

Moral: when you have a pressurised fuel tank, if the filler cap isn't fully screwed home, then petrol fuumes can escape from it, and the gauge will not read correctly..

It looks as though my bad luck is going easy on me.

Comments

[erikvolson.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that you didn't get the check engine light.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, no. I suspect that the fuel pump was delivering enough to the engine (though it felt a little sluggish compared to normal) that this wouldn't occur.

[erikvolson.livejournal.com]

You get a check engine like quickly in the US if you lose fuel system vacuum -- the whole fuel system is built to keep vapors from escaping, thanks to various regulations. So a loose fuel cap will light the check engine light quickly -- often withing a mile -- here.

I wonder if the same is true over there?

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

The filler cap was only just not fully locked. Perhaps it was just enough not to trigger an alarm, while still having an effect on the fuel gauge reading.