Fuel Delivery in Lewisville, TX

Where drivers run dry around Lewisville

Three places, consistently.

Interstate 35E. Traffic through the 35Express work zone crawls, and crawling burns fuel while covering no distance. Drivers who calculated their range on normal highway consumption find it evaporating in stop-and-go traffic. Add closed shoulders and a narrow work zone and it turns into a call rather than a coast to the next exit.

The Sam Rayburn Tollway. Fast and convenient, but the exits are spread out and stations are set back from the tollway rather than sitting on it. A low fuel warning on SH-121 has fewer options than the same warning on a surface street.

The lake roads. Once you are out around Lewisville Lake, on the park roads or heading west on FM-407 toward Flower Mound, the gaps between stations get long. Motorcycles are over-represented here for the obvious reason: small tanks, pleasant roads and an easy loop to misjudge. Plenty of our bike calls turn out to be fuel rather than a breakdown.

Why running it dry is worse than it used to be

On an older car, running out of gas was an inconvenience. On a modern one it can cost real money.

• The fuel pump is cooled by fuel. It sits inside the tank and relies on being submerged. Running the tank dry makes it run hot and dry, and repeated near-empty driving is a known way to shorten its life.
• Sediment sits at the bottom. Whatever has settled over the years gets drawn into the filter when the level drops far enough.
• Diesels have to be bled. Air in a diesel fuel system stops it firing entirely. Some modern diesels self-prime, many do not, and that turns a delivery into a tow.
• Restarting takes a while. After fuel is added, the pump has to refill an empty line. Several rounds of cranking is normal and does not mean anything is broken.

What to tell us when you call

• Gasoline or diesel. The most important detail on this page. Getting it wrong is a fuel system rebuild.
• Where exactly. Road, direction of travel and nearest exit or cross street. On I-35E the direction decides the whole route.
• Whether the car is off the road. If you are still in a live lane, that is an emergency call and it gets handled as one.
• Whether it cranks. If it turns over but will not fire, fuel is likely the whole problem. If nothing happens at all, it may be the battery instead.

Diesel is the one to get right

Worth its own heading, because the consequences are so lopsided. Putting a few gallons of gasoline into a diesel tank is one of the most expensive mistakes on this page, and it happens when nobody asks and nobody says.

Diesel fuel lubricates the injection pump. Gasoline strips that lubrication and acts as a solvent, so a modern high pressure common rail system can be damaged within a very short run. If it has already been started, the contamination is through the whole system and the repair is a full drain and often new injectors.

So if you drive a diesel, say the word diesel plainly on the phone rather than saying you need fuel. And if you have put the wrong fuel in at a station yourself, do not start the engine. Leave it off and call for a flatbed to a shop. A tow costs a fraction of an injection system.

Diesel drivers should also separate two problems that feel similar. An empty fuel tank and an empty DEF tank both put a vehicle into limp mode or stop it entirely, and they need completely different things. Say which gauge is reading empty.

Avoiding it next time

The low fuel light is not a countdown you can trust. It typically comes on with a couple of gallons left, which is fifty miles at highway speed and a lot less in the kind of stop-and-go traffic I-35E produces at rush hour. In heavy congestion that reserve disappears far faster than the gauge suggests.

Two habits help. Fill at a quarter tank rather than at the light, particularly through summer when air conditioning adds load. And fill before getting on the tollway or heading out around the lake, because both are places where the next station is further away than you think.

If the tank is not the problem and the car still will not start, the jump start page covers what the symptoms actually mean.