Stories when filling up at "gasoline station"

tdidieselbobny said:

Wait till all these people w/ large pickups and SUV's go to trade in-they are in for a KY surprise-values have dropped around 20-30% in the past couple months-and some dealers don't even want them-time to check KBB on our 04 Grand Cherokee.....no good stories on filling up-usually just some glances from people filling up their gassers......

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The Kia dealer here in town refuses to take an SUV or surburban/expedition in trade. They tell you to sell it elsewhere and then come back.

shagin'wagen said:

Where does one get one of these scangauges? I'd like to get one.

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Here's one: http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=215531&highlight=scangauge

search is your friend.

SoMDTDI said:

Here's one: http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=215531&highlight=scangauge

search is your friend.

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Thanks, search could be my friend but I make enimies too easily. That and I'm lazy and have dial-up.

shagin'wagen said:

Thanks, search could be my friend but I make enimies too easily. That and I'm lazy and have dial-up.

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What is dial-up???

Old Navy said:

What is dial-up???

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It's someting us old skool 16 year olds use when you live in a small hick town that nobody has ever heard of located in the middle of nowhere and you can't get high speed without spending $$$ a month.

My sister lives there. It's a pain in the butt. She can't share in videos and such like the rest of my family. We end up sending her cd's...

Sorry to all you dial-uppers.

Diesel here is currently $4.89 a gallon here and yesterday I was going through Perryville MO and saw Diesel @ $4.49 a gallon and topped up with 9 gallons of the stuff.

Can you imagine I was excited at getting a "deal" at $4.49 a gallon!!!

Old Navy, you are a sick, sick man to (a) consider $4.49 a deal and (b) to rub it in folks noses.

The two hundred gallons of 50% biodiesel we laid in at 5 cents a gallon over the cost of petro diesel at the pump back at the first of April keeps looking like less and less of a mistake every day and especially when I go pump a few more gallons out of one of the barrels like I'm going to do later today.

It set us back $4.05 a gallon.

But those barrels are why I don't have many gas station stories: I don't go there very often.

I filled up about 2 days ago at the local Shell Station. Kid comes out, I said fill it with the Ultra Diesel. Sadly the only Shell here in town is full serve only. Well he starts filling it and it kicks off around $72.00 I look at the pump and put down the window and said it will hold a lot more keep going. So he pumps in $10 more and stops.....Geez can't find good help anywhere these days.

So he only put in 55L I was shooting for about 65L or so cause the car was empty....Oh well.

This actually occurred on May 16th, so it was a couple of weeks ago now. But it was odd. I went to the local Time Warner cable office to swap my existing DVR for a new one. I got back out to the car and opened the box to check out the new DVR to make sure it had a remote, etc. As I was looking at it, a guy came up to my passenger side window and tapped on it. I was confused, so I stuck the key in the ignition and rolled it down a bit. He started asking me about the economy I get with my car. His dad apparently had an older VW diesel and he either has or had a friend that owned a 2002 TDI. I told him I normally get about 50 MPG combined, and that new models are coming out in the fall that are 50 state compliant. He had no idea that new models were coming out. He did know that they couldn’t be purchased in Maine for the last few years though. He had an older early 90s Camry. He said that his next car would probably be a diesel with the way fuel prices were going. He talked to me for probably about 5 minutes, and then left.

On Friday of this week, I'm driving from Southern Maine to Southern Ontario. Even though I should be able to make it to my destination without filling up, I plan to fill up at the Flying J near Buffalo before I get over the border, so maybe something exciting will happen there.

I got stopped at a gas station today (yes, a GAS station, there was no diesel available here). I stop by this Marathon most mornings, pick up an Arizona Arnold Palmer iced tea and whatever to start the morning. I get back into the TDI, start it up, belt up and am about to reverse out of the station, then I notice a guy in a 1998-2002 or so Corolla pulling up and he motions for me to roll down the window.

I comply and the first question out of his mouth is what kind of fuel mileage do I get. I reply with "About 45 MPG" and mention that I have gone 650 miles on a tank before (my A3's tank is smaller than an A4 or Passat's).

He was already fairly knowledgeable about TDIs, knew that the new commonrail 50-state cars are coming out soon and wanted to know if I was selling mine (we had exchanged what total miles each of our cars have... my TDI is at 260,000 now, his Corolla at 270k).

He gave me his number, but I told him the car had been good to me and it held a certain sentimental value (my dad's the original owner, it was the car I learned to drive a manual transmission on when the car was only a few months old... many more reasons).

I was stopped in the middle of an intersection by a pedestrian in Milan, MI yesterday over my car as well! A older man who worked for Ford a long time said he was going to buy a 2009 TDI when they come out. He went on a long rant about how Ford doesn't know what people want, how they used to produce diesel cars (I tried to tell him my dad owned a Tempo Diesel at one time, but he continued talking over me--still ranting)... The light had been green for some time and I took off as he finished ranting... There wasn't any traffic to worry about, as this was early afternoon in a small town which you can count the number of traffic lights on one hand...

Word is getting out!

Matt-98AHU said:

I was stopped in the middle of an intersection by a pedestrian... He went on a long rant ... he continued talking over me--still ranting... The light had been green for some time and I took off as he finished ranting... this was early afternoon in a small town...

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You need to find a different town.

TornadoRed said:

You need to find a different town.

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Sounds like a pretty neat town.

Sounds like my town.

A Corolla man gets TDI'd

Didn't know where else to post this...seems as good a place as any. Corolla's are mentioned often in this thread, and on the boards in general...usually in terms of how the Toyota provides similar MPG's as the TDI, but at a much lower purchase price, and with supposed superior reliability...but without the fun factor. Well, my dad owns an '04 Corolla sedan, 5-speed, with the "sport package" (tuned suspension, larger wheels, and a spoiler maybe?), and never seemed impressed when I told him that my '03 Jetta TDI wagon w/ an auto tranny gets 30/40mpg city/hwy. He'd always say "well, that's what my Corolla gets". So, just this morning he borrowed my car for a 300 mile road trip from Pittsburgh to Ann Arbor (his car is back in his home state of Arizona)...tank was a little over half full. As he's pulling into his destination, he calls me to say "wow, this car is wonderful...i didn't have to fuel-up, and it just wanted to do 80 on the highway...my toyota doesn't wanna go that fast"...and a bunch of other good stuff that I can't remember. I just laughed and reminded him of how unimpressed he had been before driving it...then told him to make sure to bring it back

muso said:

Didn't know where else to post this...seems as good a place as any. Corolla's are mentioned often in this thread, and on the boards in general...usually in terms of how the Toyota provides similar MPG's as the TDI, but at a much lower purchase price, and with supposed superior reliability...but without the fun factor. Well, my dad owns an '04 Corolla sedan, 5-speed, with the "sport package" (tuned suspension, larger wheels, and a spoiler maybe?), and never seemed impressed when I told him that my '03 Jetta TDI wagon w/ an auto tranny gets 30/40mpg city/hwy. He'd always say "well, that's what my Corolla gets". So, just this morning he borrowed my car for a 300 mile road trip from Pittsburgh to Ann Arbor (his car is back in his home state of Arizona)...tank was a little over half full. As he's pulling into his destination, he calls me to say "wow, this car is wonderful...i didn't have to fuel-up, and it just wanted to do 80 on the highway...my toyota doesn't wanna go that fast"...and a bunch of other good stuff that I can't remember. I just laughed and reminded him of how unimpressed he had been before driving it...then told him to make sure to bring it back

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Classic

My brother and I were just saying how we can talk Tdi to people until we're blue in the face, but all people hear is low hp numbers and "economy" and think it's a putz car. Once someone drives one, everything changes. There's just no substitute for a test drive.

Unfortunately, I'm no longer comfortable with letting a non-Tdi owner drive my car anymore. I'd be afraid they'd trash the clutch, burn up the rubber, or destroy my tranny because the car is smokin fast now with mounds of torque.

Let a friend drive my wifes old MB couple months ago and it impressed him, but mainly on the highway and how smooth and quite it was for a 200K mile car. This weekend he drove the CDI and was blown away with the power of that 3L turbo for sure and was saying how do I keep from getting a ticket. Just luckey is all I said.

I may have converted a fellow Dieseler to TDI...

I was fueling up my car today and was waiting for the foam to settle when a Jeep Wrangler pulled up on the other side of the pump from me. (There are only 4 diesel/gas combo pumps at this station.) I was thinking to myself how much I hate waiting for a gasser to fill up at the Diesel pumps, especially when there are 4 other gas pumps that are still open. About then I noticed a Ford F250 Powerstroke pull in and patiently wait his turn to use the diesel pump that a gasser was using. While he went in to pre-pay I had just finished fueling and was waiting for my receipt to print, so I decided to strike up conversation with a fellow dieseler. I mentioned about him having to wait to use the diesel pump and he said he hates it when he pulls into the station and there is a black hose coming out of the pump going into a vehicle when there are people that require the yellow hose for their vehicle. I mentioned to him that when the Jeep pulled in there were 2 gas pumps completely open and he pulled past them to pull up to the combo pump.

After that short conversation I started another asking him what kind of mileage he got out of his truck. He said he gets 16mpg pretty consistently. He told me it would be better but he's chipped and can't keep his foot out of it. I told him I'm chipped too, and I have the same problem. He said he bets the car is a hell of a lot of fun to drive. I agreed. He then asked about the Jetta's mileage and I told him I get a pretty consistent 35-38 in town and hit 46 once on the highway. His mouth dropped open. I think he almost fainted when I told him about the 600 miles to a tank of all in-town driving.

After all was said and done, he said he needed to get a TDI. Hopefully I see him in a couple more months with one.

-Brian

P.S. I made sure to show him the car was fun to drive when I left. There was an impressive squawk of my new tires (oops) and a nice smoke trail following me.

Oh Grelli, you made my day. Wondering how many other ppl have seen Mallrats and had the opportunity to use that line.

As far as fill-up stories mine is a diesel gas comparison. I live in a small canadian town, wich means about 3600 ppl (the cops know me by name, but thats not the point). with my '79 pontiac the trunk had so much stuff in it a local cop who was filling up asked if I had some dead bodies in there. About 2 months later after i got my beloved Jetta TDI he made comment about my schlitzy new wheels. "yeah, now i can haul bodies and nobody can tell." Im not sure if he took it as a joke or not, but i didnt get handcuffed so it all went well.

Is this not the longest ....oldest.... best thread on site!!!

agreed

N_D_v_22101 said:

I agree with the above stated statement as stated by both bikegeek and speed185187

Oh and a bump to one of the bestest/longest threads on this site!

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STICKY!! STICKY!! STICKY!! STICKY!!

I've said it several times before and I'll say it again...this thread deserves to be made a sticky at the top. It has proven to be a universal topic that every diesel owner can relate to and it's emerged as a TDIclub favorite thread. I've noticed whenever the thread sits dormant for a while and then somebody posts a new story, the fresh visibility at the top always triggers a flood of new fillup stories. This thread may hold the TDIclub record for the largest number of views and largest number of replies. Keep those great fillup stories coming!

IIRC, the originator of the thread needs to apply for sticky status with a forum moderator in order to get the thread stickied at the top.

Most excellent idea....!!!!!

I pulled into the Navy Exchange gas station in Annapolis the other day to fill up. While there a guy with a Lexus on the other side of the pump started to ask about my milage. I told him I was getting 36mpg average since I bought it but could do better if I tried. He asked about the 09 Jettas and said he heard that they were supposed to get 60mpg. Looks like some rumors just won't go away. I corrected him and told him that the EPA had come up with 41 but TDI's usually do much better than the EPA.

My wife was telling me about her day out and about and mentioned that she went to the filling station to get a soda. She comes out, gets in, the windows are rolled down and she starts the car up.
Well there was this guy standing one or two parking spots away leaning up against some big ass contractors truck, a powerstroke or duramax or something like that. She said that when the car started his head snapped around so fast and gave the car weird look.

"that a diesel?"
"yup" she said
"it come that way?"
"yup"
"hmph." he nodded



I had to chuckle.

My recent experience was at the DQ not a fuel station. I was getting back in the car and this guy pulls up in a Blazer. He starts asking questions and seemed very knowledgable. I asked him if he visits this site and he said he had not heard of it then pulled out some parts catalog. I can't remember what he called it but flipped it to the back page and showed me a rebuilt engine and said that he couldn't afford a TDI that was in good condition, but was looking for a cheap old one that he could swap out a reman engine. Then tells me that he just picked up the Blazer a couple of months ago. I felt really bad for the guy...getting 15MPG, wanting 45 AND because my wife's car is a 98 Jimmy that looks just like his Blazer and it has been a complete POS. He would have been better off with a 'well-worn' TDI.

BenW said:

"that a diesel?"
"yup" she said
"it come that way?"
"yup"
"hmph." he nodded

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Ha! it come that way?! That's funny/strange!

I usually just have to explain that you don't need any sort of conversion to run biodiesel. Mostly to other diesel drivers! I talk to all sorts of people about diesels and have yet to meet a person who knew the difference between biodiesel and vegetable oil, other than the guy with the blue jetta that had replaced his "TDI" badge with a "VEG" badge, his wife/lady friend had to wait while he showed me his entire coversion.

"it come that way? hmph." priceless! I probably would have LMAO on the spot!

BenW said:

"that a diesel?"
"yup" she said
"it come that way?"
"yup"
"hmph." he nodded

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CLASSIC.

I've had a few people ask me that, sometimes while fueling up. They seem to think the car was a gasser originally and I somehow managed to do an engine swap and dropped a diesel engine in there.

You dropped a diesel in your car? I just converted my gasoline engine to run on diesel! Everybody is doing it!