I had a minor scare on the drive back. The drive is 85 miles and my car said I had 100 miles worth of gas to do it with. My car lies. 20 miles into the drive the "Miles to empty" suddenly dropped to 60. 5 miles after that it dropped to 30. That would be one gallon of gas in a 20 gallon tank or, to put it another way, my tank was 95% empty. Still, 30 miles is more than the 2 miles I needed to get to the next exit.

One mile later I started up a hill and the dash did some back-of-the-envelope math and changed its estimate from 30 to 15. The engine found this figure wildly optimistic and promptly started sputtering. In light of this new information the dash dropped the number down to 10 and turned on the "Check Engine" light.

The only thing to do when the check engine light comes on is pull over and call a tow trunk. Otherwise you risk turning your engine into a very expensive paper weight. I wasn't sure if the light only meant "check engine for gasoline" so I pulled over. After checking the oil and mulling over the consequences I decided to chance it getting to the next exit. The dash concured and raised the MTE back up to 15.

19.65 gallons of gas solved my fuel problem and disconnecting/reconnecting the battery reset the "check engine" light. All in all this distraction only cost about twenty minutes of my time. And now it claimed two of yours.