Dear Tom and Ray:

Because I don't think about cars at all (unless there's one coming at me at a
rapid speed), this question may be very dumb. My sister says that different
brands of gas, even though they're the same octane, will produce different
amounts of mileage. She says she can buy one brand of gas and get from Pittsburgh
to Carlisle, Pa., on a quarter of a tank, while another brand will burn half a
tank going the same distance over the same roads. She attributes this to the
octane rating being an average and says that some companies cheat with their
numbers. Is she full of gas? -- Sandy

TOM: Full of gas? No. Full of something else? Sounds like it to me!

RAY: While there are very slight variations in the octanes of gasolines you buy,
it's nothing you would ever be able to measure with the equipment you're using
(for example, a 1992-era Ford Escort and a dashboard gas gauge).

TOM: Right. There's no way that different brands of gas of the same octane could
produce mileage differences this great. My guess is that when she "fills up" the
tank, sometimes she fills it more "up" than other times.

RAY: The dashboard gas gauge is a very rough estimator. Even though the gauge may
read "full," there may be room for another couple of gallons of gas in the tank
itself. And that would explain why she sometimes arrives at her destination with
the gauge reading half-full.

TOM: Other times, when she really tops it up and puts in as much gas as it will
take, it's only down a quarter when she arrives.

RAY: Dashboard gas gauges are good as relative measures. They tell you when the
tank is pretty full, and when it's pretty empty. To use them for anything more
precise than that is like using your kitchen scale to weigh molecules of
radioactive plutonium (which our lawyers have asked us to remind you not to try
at home).

TOM: If she wants some slightly more accurate numbers, Sandy, tell her to fill up
the tank (and stop when it automatically shuts off the first time), drive to
Carlisle and record the number of miles driven. Then fill it up again the same
way, do the math and figure out how many miles per gallon she got. That method is
not approved by the federal bureau of weights and measures either, but it'll be
more accurate than what she's doing.
***

Help safeguard your investment by ordering Tom and Ray?-s pamphlet Ten Ways You
May Be Ruining Your Car Without Even Knowing It! Send $3 and a stamped (55
cents), self-addressed, No. 10 envelope to Ruin, PO Box 6420, Riverton, NJ 08077-
6420.
***
Got a question about cars? Write to Click and Clack in care of this newspaper, or
e-mail them by visiting the Car Talk section of cars.com on the World Wide Web.
?(C) 1999 by Tom and Ray Magliozzi and Doug Berman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.