This morning Dusty and Evan planned to run some errands and visit a couple of yard sales. At around 10am, she called me at work and said she had a flat tire. She was about 10 miles away northwest of town. Though I’m sure she could have managed herself, I left work to help.
When I got there, we moved the spoils of her shopping spree into my truck, got to the spare, and changed the tire. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just a small nail hole that caused the flat, but rather an irreparable 3 inch gash in the tread of the tire. I gave Dusty my truck so she could finish her errands and I took her car, complete with the fashionable bright yellow temporary spare. We grabbed some quick lunch and went our separate ways.
When I was just about back to work, my phone rang. Dusty was stranded again. This time out of gas. That’s my fault, really, since I had intended to put gas in the truck on the way home from work. My little unplanned rescue mission apparently left her about 4 miles of gas 🙂 I turned around, stopped at a gas station, bought a gas can, and took her a couple of gallons. To the best of my memory, that’s the first time since high school that my vehicle has run out of gas…
There’s good news and bad news to the way things turned out. On the down side, I’m out $180 for a new tire (thanks to Mazda’s “zoom zoom!” factor). Thankfully, though, the truck ran out of gas when it did. We would have been in much bigger trouble had I run out of gas before meeting her to change the tire… It’s still a bit amusing that despite our tendency to keep new, reliable vehicles, my wife gets stranded with car trouble… twice… in one hour… in two different vehicles…
Ok, you may notice it’s about midnight, and I’m talking to myself. I was bothered by the question “why did we run out of gas?” and couldn’t sleep. I looked at Dusty’s gas receipt, and between that and the 2 gallons I brought, we only put in 22 gallons. That doesn’t make sense- why would a truck with a 24 gallon tank run out of gas with two gallons left?
I’ve owned three Dodge Dakotas, the first one purchased new in 1999. As such, I feel pretty familiar with the model. Since 1997, the club cab model has always had a 22 gallon tank, and the quad cab (since its introduction in 1999) has always had a 24 gallon tank. Wrong. In 2005, along with the redesign of the Dakota, and despite the large number of parts that remained unchanged, they started putting a 22 gallon tank in all models. All this time I could have sworn I had a 24 gallon tank, and I timed my fuel stops with that “knowledge”. A quick glance at my gas records shows that on half of my fillups, I’ve had less than one gallon left in my tank. Oops…
Korey, you may want to check but a lot of tires have road hazzard on them and it may not cost anything to replace.
Believe me, I made some calls. Neither Toyo, Mazda Corporate nor Heritage Mazda want anything to do with the situation. I found my tire warranty book and road hazards are excluded.