how to tell what side your gas tank is on

Does the Arrow on a Car's Gas Gauge Indicate Which Side Has the Fuel Tank?

Merits

Vehicle fuel gauges characteristic a small arrow on the car'southward interior indicating the side of the vehicle on which its gas tank is located.

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Reporting

Advertisements A tweet published in Dec 2018 reiterated a long-circulating purported "life hack," in which an piece of cake-to-miss arrow on a auto'south gas guess indicated the side of the vehicle on which its gas tank was located:

How one-time were you when yous realized the arrow on the gas pump in your machine shows which side the gas tank is on? https://t.co/Bb7BlD76k5

The tweet alluded to the pop "today years old" meme phrasing, hinting that few people are aware that such an indicator exists on their vehicles.

In June 2017, WPVI published a piece about the tip, as did car insurer Allstate on their blog in Baronial 2012. Communication near gas pump indicator arrows appeared equally far back equally blog posts published in 2008.

Allstate described a common badgerer drivers encountered in rental vehicles or other unfamiliar cars:

Last week while driving a rental car, I pulled upwardly at a gas station and experienced the dreaded "Oh no!" moment: I had no idea on which side of my car the gas cap was located. If you lot're similar me, the initial "Oh no!" is followed by a few moments of awkwardly craning your cervix out the window in hopes of seeing (or non seeing) the gas door on the commuter'southward side. By and large, however, I guess and just pull upwardly to the pump — just to back up and circle around when my gauge is incorrect.

The particular went on to detail the gas gauge indicator tip, only with a caveat — when available, the arrow appears to only be a feature in relatively new cars, and the characteristic is apparently a courtesy, not a standard:

Good news: The clandestine to the gas cap location has been on our dashboards all along. If yous are driving a newer car (every bit many rental cars are), then take a look at the arrow past the gas gauge on your dashboard. Depending on your car, information technology may look similar a triangle pointing to the left or right … What nearly in older cars that lack the arrow? Can gas gauges tell us on which side the gas cap is located? Older cars still have a gas pump icon located near the gas gauge. The pump icon's handle either extends to the left or right.

So does the handle location point which side to pull upward side by side to the gas pump? Unfortunately, this popular Net rumor has been shot downwards. Sometimes there is a correlation between the pump handle and the gas cap location, but it appears to exist just coincidence. The side of the handle does non always indicate the side of the gas pump; only the gas approximate arrow, featured on newer models, does.

Full general images of gas gauges illustrated this disparity. While the Toyota Corolla (model twelvemonth uncertain) on the left featured the indicating arrow, a 2003 Honda Civic on the right did non:

As for the origins of gas gauge arrows, automotive site Jalopnik delved into the disputed genesis of the trend, when it possibly started, and around which year (1997) automakers purportedly began featuring gauge indicators:

The unsung hero/inventor of the fuel filler dashboard arrow is a designer named Jim Moylan, who worked for Ford. The thought came to Moylan in April of 1986, who had to fill a Ford company car in the rain, and was frustrated when he got soaked considering he picked the wrong side. He wrote up a memo with the idea, sent it off to his bosses, and that's pretty much how it happened.

The bosses saw the value in the (pleasingly cheap-to-implement) idea, and in 1989, the Ford Escort and Mercury Tracer became the commencement cars to accept the little fuel filler-location pointer.

Once more, sort of.

Come across, while I'yard not disputing Moylan's story—I 100 percent believe he came up with the idea independently—I do think the fuel filler-location arrow has an earlier genesis, and it's one that, frustratingly, its parent company doesn't even acknowledge. I recollect the start example of the fuel filler-location pointer shows up in 1976, on the dash cluster of the Mercedes-Benz W123…

[…]

Unfortunately, the tenacious sleuths over at Every Petty Affair institute that Mercedes-Benz themselves seems to accept totally forgotten most this, and thinks that they started putting the petty pointer on their dashes with the 1997 K-Form.

An undated web log post cites aConsumer Reportsengineer'due south merits that a bulk of new model vehicles feature the gas pump indicator arrow, merely both of those categories were relatively vague. It also follows that a minority of new cars do not feature the indicator well-nigh their gas gauges.

Claims nearly the gas judge indicator arrow are true. Co-ordinate to automotive experts and consumer advocates, the characteristic is at least common on "new" vehicles — but we establish no clear model year tipping point for widespread inclusion. The tip is likely to help drivers of rental cars, fleets of which tended to be new relative to cars on the road.

Drivers (or borrowers) of older vehicles might not take note of an absent-minded gas gauge indicator until they are already incorrectly parked at a gas pump, just the merits appears to be one that gets more true as fourth dimension passes.

But in some ways, it also became less truthful; at the same time the tweet above circulated, a viral video of a woman purportedly trying (and failing) to put gas in an all-electrical vehicle made by Tesla made the rounds

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Source: https://www.truthorfiction.com/does-the-arrow-on-a-cars-gas-gauge-indicate-which-side-has-the-fuel-tank/