Car and fuel question

[hawkida]

So I have filled up my car several times now, they have a tendency to drink petrol. I'd had no problems the first few times. Then, a couple of weeks back I had a few passengers and when I tried to fill the car would take a small amount of fuel before the pump cut out as though the tank was full. It did this repeatedly, taking about 70p - £2 of fuel at a time. Eventually, when the cost was what I expected to spend, I stopped. I had tried several different angles of pushing the hose's nose into the fuel tank, don't think I was doing anything different. I wondered if the car might be at a weird "laden" angle with all the passengers and asked them to get out, to no avail. So I put it down to a dodgy pump.

Today I just went and fuelled up at that same station, but a totally different pump and it's doing exactly the same thing. So, either my car's got something weirdly wrong with it, or I'm doing something stupid. My bet's on the latter. Any clues what it might be, anyone?

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

It's the automatic fuel cut off for when the pump thinks the tank is full - if it detects any kind of back pressure the pump will stop fuel flow.

Some pumps are more fiddly than others and it's purely an angle thing - so you have to keep playing with trying different angles and the like. You'll certainly find that if you have people in the car the angle you need to put the nozzle in at will be different.

The only thing is to keep trying and it will sort itself out. I get this all the time with hire cars.