Why am I stuck on the side of the road?
 

Tried to drive the Miata in to work today, and it suddenly died. AFRs went full lean, then it died. I was logging at the time, so I can post any log data.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...0cbb0ab01d.jpg

Did it start back up after it died? Anything else you noticed that might have been out of the usual?

Fuel pumps don't last forever. That was my issue last month. Other items to check, main relay, fuel pump relay, frayed wiring.

Are you still stuck on the side of the road? If you are in the kent area I might be able to leave work for a bit and help.

No nothing obvious. It doesn't seem to be a lost sinc, since the count was 0 until after the afr went full lean.

This sounds stupid, but it might be just it of gas? It didn't sputter though. My empty mark might have moved after changing my gauge faces. I have a friend bringing me some gas

I'm in Snohomish, but thanks.

I hear the pump priming when I turn the ignition on.

Aaaaaand it was gas. I ran out of gas. Like a dope. 1/8th tank is the new empty.

Heh. I know someone who brought his new race car to the track for a test day, took it out, spent an hour debugging "misfires", gave up, towed it home, dropped it off at his mechanic's, and then paid for 3 hours of labor to diagnose a car that was out of gas and had a broken gas gauge. :)

--Ian

Oh man, I hope you gave him a hard time for that one. I feel lucky I was logging. I would have checked a bunch of other things first otherwise. Seeing the AFR go max lean in the log before any other events combined with a pump that was still priming was a strong indicator.

I cam fairly close to doing this in my NB. My NA only takes 9.5 galons when the pointer has gone past the empty line and is pointing at the top left corner of the E. The NB is out at the line... I was just a smidge above it when I filled up the first time and took almost a whole tank of gas...

Random question slightly relates to the comment.

Why do you guys let your tanks get so low? I killed a DW400 on my supercharger Mustang a long time ago, and I suspect it was because I always ran the tank to almost empty before refilling.

Because of reasons mostly.

because i have to idle for 30 minutes at costco before the pump is available to save .05 a gallon.

Isnt this the truth though.

Because the Miata has a tiny tank and mediocre fuel economy? This was the reason I drove my S2000 up to 50 miles with the gas light on regularly. Otherwise I would have been filling up everyday.

Because fuel is heavy, dude. :)

(Actually a semi-serious answer here -- most serious autocrossers will run with just enough fuel to keep it from starving in corners, because that's 60 pounds of weight they don't need to carry around the course).

--Ian

Many brain cells were lost in the reading of this thread

Many lost brain cells contributed to the creation of this thread.

Lololol

Hold on. I'm not done.
Lololol

Yeah, that's about how I feel about the whole situation.