IamIan's EUC bailed me out yesterday.
The Mazda CX-5 sometimes stutters and dies randomly, and it seems to coincide with having less than 1/4 tank of fuel left. It had only done it twice before, once with my wife, and once with me.
I was nervously driving down from the coastal range towards Portland, keeping an eye on when my next fuel opportunity would be. With 22 miles of range showing left according to the car, and 1/8th tank showing from the digital fuel gauge, I wondered if the car would decide to stutter and die again. I passed the small fuel station knowing it wouldn't accept the fleet fuel card I have to use, and continued on downhill hoping to get fuel at the Arco in 10 miles.
1.5 miles later the car stutters, and I immediately know it's going to die, so I pull off at a country store. Unable to start the car again, I hop on the EUC, and at 17 MPH, I quickly arrive at the fuel station, purchase a 1 gallon fuel container and a gallon of fuel. 1.5 miles back to the car, and I'm back on the road again, the whole ordeal taking about 20 minutes.
The EUC is such a nice thing to have when misfortune strikes. I'm also going to keep a gallon of ethanol free fuel in the car, hopefully only using it for other stranded drivers from here on out.
After tallying the fuel put back into the Mazda, it appears to not be accessing the last 2 gallons of the 15 gallon fuel tank, and only occasionally as I've pushed the fuel towards empty way more than that before.
The previous time it stuttered and died I was able to start the vehicle and accelerate just enough to steer hard side to side to slosh things up in the tank, and then I drove another 15 miles to a petrol station. At that time I hadn't really formulated a hypothesis on why the car died, but just took an everything approach to hobbling the car along.
I'm not sure how fuel pickups work in a passenger vehicle. In a motorcycle there is a straw that sticks up in the fuel tank making it so you run out of fuel even though there's more at the bottom of the tank. Then you switch the fuel petcock to reserve, and it bypasses the straw, giving the full tank capacity.
I'm picturing a flexible hose with a weight on it that picks up fuel in a passenger vehicle. Perhaps I have a hole in that hose? Maybe the weight fell off so it kinda floats? Trying to figure out why it sometimes allows the full capacity to be accessed, but sometimes not.
This is one of those problems I'm hesitant to send to a dealer because those monkeys are incapable of using simple math to troubleshoot a problem. They'll say to refill sooner, or replace the sending unit, or something equally pointless to resolve the issue.
