Do you have a tendency to drive your vehicle past the point of the gas gauge pointing to empty? Do you see the little gas light come on and willfully ignore it? Do you like to live life on the edge? Well, don’t! Yeah, you read that right, don’t do that! Never let your tank get below a quarter full! It’s really bad for your vehicle, and also you have no way of knowing how much gas is actually in your tank once you hit that point. Keep reading and maybe you’ll get where I am coming from on this one.

The first reason why it’s bad is because your fuel gauge isn’t always accurate. Sure, there are some vehicles out there that will tell you things like “you have 5 miles until empty,” but even that’s not fully true. You never know how much is really left once you hit that E until your vehicle actually runs out of gas. It could be 5 miles, it could be 50, but do you really want to find out? There are plenty of videos on YouTube of other people testing it out. Just watch them, don’t try it yourself.

Next, there’s sediment at the bottom of every fuel tank. When your fuel level gets lower and lower, that sediment gets closer and closer to getting sucked up with the fuel and pushed through your fuel lines and fuel injectors, clogging them up and destroying your fuel system from the inside out. If you let this happen often enough, your vehicle will need a full engine flush. That is pretty dang expensive.

Finally, your fuel pump uses the gas it pulls in as a coolant. When there’s not enough gas, it starts sucking in air. The air creates more friction and definitely isn’t as cool as the liquid fuel, and your pump burns out very quickly, especially if this practice is repeated often. The repair or replacement is expensive. Much more expensive than a tank of gas. Believe us on that one.