At the pump (question)
 

When you're filling up at the pump, do you leave your FC running or do you turn it off? When I bought my T2 (like a month ago) the guy who sold it to me said I should keep it running while I fill it up because of the whole hot-start problem dealy, but lately I've been turning the car off because I'm afraid of it blowing up or something, and people tend to give me dirty looks when I leave it running. What do you guys do, and why?

Btw, you should have seen me the first time I filled up my car. I was running all around the thing inside and out trying to find out how to open the fuel door. Took me like 2 minutes to find that little lever. :p:

well the thing with leaving it running at a pump is that the gas attentents always watch films of blown up gas stations and body bags of gas attendents.... technically no your car won't blow up. gas sits in the tank all day while the car runs... putting gas into the tank doesn't make the gas tank suddenly volatile. if the nozzle is shoved in fast enough maybe but not likely it could spark, but then your engine doesn't need to be running from that. the only way to blow up while running the engine is to have the engine spark as fuel is running by the spark. even smokes won't catch a puddle of fuel on fire. you can put them out in puddles of gas. their just not hot enough. just don't play with wires next to the pump.

I allways heard it had soemthing to do with the car building up a chard that could spark when the nosle is inserted if its running.

I dunno, I never leave mine running, nor have I heard of any reason to do so.

Jarrett

If you leave your car running while filling up and it blows up, it's your fault because you left it on. If you turn it off, do everything right, and it still blows up, it's their fault. I say just turn it off. There's a lot less liability on your part if you do.

*EDIT* Also, I've never had a problem with hot starting my car, but then I've only had it a month.

With the whole put a cigarette out in a puddle of gasoline statement:

You can do this, because it's not the liquid that catches fire and explodes... initially...

It's the fumes you have to worry about. With proper ventalation, and fume dispersment, you can drop a lit match into a bucket of fuel and it will not catch fire.

As for doing everything right... who's fault is it if you spark yourself with static electricity to start a fire?

Fikshun

Okay, thanks for the replies guys. I'll just keep turning the car off like I've been doing. The car never holds idle when I first turn it on, so I just give it enough gas to hold it at about 1000rpms until it warms up a bit and hold the idle (Usually takes about a minute or two). The only problem I've really had when I turn the car back on when its still hot is that it takes 5 minutes or more until the engine will hold it's idle. Even then the idle's jumpy (revs to 1000rpms, drops to 500rpms, revs to 1000rpms, drops to... etc), but I guess that's just the nature of the car, and the need for a little tweaking.

There are laws in some states the require the engine be off when fuelling.

I watched some film taken from gas stations monitoring cameras, of people fueling their cars and the car blowing up and the people catching fire. The cause was static electricity when the gal offered the pump nozzle up to the re-fuel nozzle on the car. Kabloooi, snap, crackle and pop. Ummmmm, burnt flesh smell.

That's why on aircraft refueling you first ground the airplane, then the re-fuel truck to the same ground as the airplane, then re-fuel. Also the personnel should ground themselves to the same grounds as the a/c and the refuel truck to discharge themselves of static electricity.

It's against the law in Tx to refuel with the engine running. The fellow who sold you the car was just paranoid about not being able to restart his car after shutting it off to refuel. Probably got tired of shoving it out of the way so others could re-fuel. Embarrasment thing.

either way if it blows up you're dead.. so why's it matter if it's your fault or theirs?

As for leaving it running, I leave my TurboII running.. for about 30 seconds.. then the turbo timer shuts it off :) Usually by the time the pump is ready to go it's off anyhow. People give me dirty looks too...

As for the spark, that's kinda weird... that would suck.