Ask HN: Does anyone else notice that gas runs out faster than usual

Gas is likely mixed with cheaper Ethanol now. Depending where you live there's likely less taxes on Ethanol, too.

Ethanol has an Octane rating of 114%, meaning that you can run your engine with less fuel in the fuel/gas mixture, if your engine, pipes, fuel pump and rubber hoses are made for that.

Ethanol is pretty awesome in terms of HP output, but you have to reprogram the maps in the ECU to correctly use it. The timings of "how fast" Ethanol explodes inside your engine cylinders is also faster, meaning if you don't remap your ECU there's chances of backfire because the valves don't close fast enough. That means if you don't have a V-Tec or similarly digitally controlled valve steering you have to also modify your camshaft.

Source: Rebuild 3 cars and their engines to be fueled with Ethanol because I live near a race track with cheap access to Ethanol.

Edit: some gas stations in the past were using shitty additives to boost the ethanol mixture with toluols and methyl ethylene variants, so could also be that. They're really bad for your engine block. Like, reeeeally bad because their mixture is very unpredictable and varies too much for a proper ethanol ECU map.

I once read about a gas station that rigged their pumps. They discovered that the 'gas police' who came and measured gas to make sure pumps were properly working; always pumped a multiple of 10 gallons to measure.

They rigged the pumps to rack up more charges for the first 5 gallons, and then slow the charges for the next 5 gallons. That way it always read 10 gallons at those intervals, but overcharged you if you got less. Someone pumping 4 gallons (or 14) was charged as if they had pumped 6 (or 16).

They got caught when someone noticed that the gauge ran faster, then slower as you filled up.

Check your gas cap, I had this effect happen in my car because I had lost my gas cap. It can also happen in its damaged in some way. I don't have this habit so I can't tell you if I am observing a similar effect.

> I love the smell of gas

There's a reason those molecules got the name aromatic compunds[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatic_compound

Track it! Any Spreadsheet. Columns: date, where you filled up, how many gallons, dollar total, odometer reading, mpg function ((currentodo - prevodo) /gallons), ppg function (total / gallons).

You could also install something like https://lubelogger.com/ (naming decision aside), if you happen to do any self-hosting. It is a lightweight vehicle tracker. It has a fuel tracking screen. I personally only use it to track maintenance, but have been thinking about starting to track fuel consumption given the current disruption.