Last Fill Up Ended on the Ground and All Over My Cars New Paint

It must be nice to be a pump perfectionist. Many people move away from the pump when it is auto-filling. That is what the technology is for. Most just sit in the car to avoid the elements, or like the other user said, to clean the windows, check oil, toss some trash. I was no further then the trash can, about 20 feet, and back in less then 90 seconds, about the same time it would have taken me to clean the front wind shield. Not a big deal.

I hope you are lucky and your 2008 Prius dos not over-flow gas under your ever vigilant watch. Good day sir.

Steve

 

I am specifically speaking about going into the store. I can’t believe anyone would do that. For more reasons than I could even think of…

 

Getting back in your car while filling up is a bad idea. Doing so can cause a buildup of static and cause a fire. This isn't a myth either. See

if you wanna see a case of it.

I'm not sure who these "most" people are who get back in their cars while filling up either. I only see a small minority of people doing this whenever I fillup.

Despite your claims, you do sound sue happy. I've also been on the winning side of class action lawsuit settlements but it was from things I received in the mail and I never provided any testimony. I just submitted the paperwork they requested and that was it.

As for reliability, you're in luck. The Prius has the HIGHEST reliability out of any family car rated by Consumer Reports.

Much of the time, class action lawsuits do little. The consumers get little benefit and the lawyers make out like bandits. Example: I got zip out of IBM 75GXP Deskstar (aka Deathstar) settlement because IBM sent me a warranty replacements for drives that went bad... Well, I could've taken them up on a pack of 25 CD-Rs (big whoop) or 15% off a future purchase directly from IBM United States.

 

Not to belabor the point, bu the signs at the gas station that say, "You must remain at the pump while refueling" are there for a reason. In fact, isn't it illegal to leave the pump unattended? (That might vary from state to state)

 

That's a relief to hear that there was actually something wrong with your fuel system, and that it wasn't simply a flawed design.

 

I hope this solves your problem. Keep us posted. I will wait to see if it happens to me on my next couple of fills. If so I will make reference to your problem and your dealers repair.

Thanks again;
Jim M.

PS This may still be a problem with a run of defective parts put into a group of 2008s.

 

Thanks RochesterUser;
I'll follow your advise. It may also be that Toyota was working with mods to fix the "Belching Gas tank syndrome" on the earlier models.

Regards;
JimMedill

 

Woops - Posted by accident - Anyone know how to delete your own post???
Regards;
JimMedill

 

I've narrowly avoided one of these twice (most recently yesterday) and only because I read about it long before I got my car. Both times the pump didn't shut off when I expected (anything over 9 gallons is suspect) so I cut it off myself. I heard the gurgle when I removed the nozzle so I put it back in immediately and waited. After a couple of minutes the tank was done trying to barf and I was able to get away without a spill.

On a side note, it really aggravates me that a piece of equipment designed to eliminate emissions may well be responsible for creating even more. Even a pint of gasoline left to evaporate is a huge amount relative to what the car is supposed to emit over a long period of time (which is nearly none). The bladder needs to go away.

 

—Just visited this 'overfill' thread for the first time and will add, for those 'keeping track,' my experience with overfill.... New 08 Prius in November. Located in Eastern Coastal Maine. On January 4th, low barometer, outside ambient air temp of 25º±, on my seventh fill at an RH Foster (chain) station and pump I've used with no problem for 20+ years, the following occurred:

Tank was down to the blinking bar so I, in retrospect, should have expected 9 gal.±..., inserted pump nozzle, set to middle automatic position (auto-fill is legal in Maine...), started pump, picked up sponge washer, did headlights, refreshed squeegee, started on tail lights and the pump clicked off. I observed only 7 1/2 gal. on pump so I started adding manually and very slowly in that I was new to the car and had a 'vague' idea that I'd read the bladder tank was a slow fill and, from the manual, was aware of not attempting to "top off" as I'd done for a lifetime in my other vehicles... My mind (I'm age 67) wandered off, I guess, and suddenly I began to smell gas. I stopped pumping and observed a considerable puddle under the rear of the car —it did not come bubbling and burping out of the fill pipe. I was shocked to observe 11.3 gallons on the pump! (Again, for a lifetime, I've been used to using the autofill to first shut-off, and then manually adding gas through successive auto shut-offs until I hear the gas in the fill pipe. ——Perhaps this has been, in retrospect, an 'unsafe' practice but I believe it is quite 'common' throughout America and I would respectfully suggest that Toyota address the issue...) Letting everything sit and evaporate, I blocked off the pump area and went in to advise the manager that I believed the pump nozzle auto shut-off was defective. She advised that the pumps had all been recently checked and certified and that no one had reported a problem with that pump before. —That I should have stopped filling after the first auto shut-off....

Quite angry, I eventually left the station and drove an extra hundred miles to draw down the excess fuel in the hope that I'd not done damage to the filters, etc... In my cooling off period I concluded that she was correct. I should have stopped after the first auto shut-off (even though it appeared the tank was one to two gallons shy...).

On subsequent fills I then adopted the policy of filling manually and on the slowest flow. On the first auto shut-off I stop and check the pump and then the dash gauge. Usually, I will see all the bars lit and about what I expected for gallons on the pump. However, I have noticed a few times that the first auto shut-off occurs and there is still one unlit bar on the gauge... In that case I proceed to slowly add a bit more with a careful eye on the pump gallonage and any sound at the fill pipe. I've not overfilled again (8 tanks) using this method.

Lastly, now with a Scan Gauge II, I've enjoyed noting the predicted gallons needed on the SG II's read-out and have been very happy to note that the pump auto shut-off occurs within ± one tenth of a gallon of the Scan Gauge's prediction.


Conclusion: To avoid overfill and/or damage to the 08 tanks (at least) and systems: fill Manually, fill Slowly, Anticipate (by car gauge, paper calcs, or Scan Gauge II) the gallons needed, and Observe the pump gallonage at you near the top... "MSAO" to add a new acronym to the Prius glossary of terms??? ( : >)

It would appear that this tank overfill thing is a very real problem with the Prius but I'm so extremely happy with the car that I've learned to not mind the 'extra' time it takes to fill the old-fashioned way.... It will be interesting to see what any investigation(s) produce....

My time to re-explore threads is sometimes limited so please do not hesitate to e-mail me at: [email protected] if you would like or need any corroborative confirmation of my logged overfill noted above.

Best, Dr. Wesley A. Shaw

 

Fun "little" vehicle? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

 

To avoid "over-expanding" the bladder, and the consequent "burp-up" of gas, all you have to do is to cut away the foam seal at the top of the fill pipe (possibly illegal in some jurisdictions like Calif.). I did that on my previous Prius, an '04 and had no further problems with burp-up. The gas pump nozzles are designed to shut off when fluid (gasoline) backs up into the nozzle, not necessarily when only pressurized gasoline vapor is present. Sometimes during normal automatic pump flow rates, the vapor being displaced in the bladder cannot escape rapidly enough through the intended path, i.e. the charcoal canister, etc. Removing the nozzle seal allows a small amount of gasoline to escape into the air in the form of vapor, but that is much less than several quarts spilling on the ground. I agree that Priuses in the US should have the same no-bladder tanks as the rest of the world gets. Perhaps we can blame the California CARB people for this stupid tank design.

 

This seems promising as a fix. Has anyone else tried this?

 

Did the dealer take care of your fuel tank problem? Why don't they have techs working around the clock to take care of this weeks ago? After all you are a VIP, friend of a friend of some guy who owns a toyota dealership. That's like royalty in america... I hope they aren't able to fix your car and you win the biggest class action lawsuit in the world mister consumer advocate. I can really tell that you act the way you do because you care.

By the way, getting on the internet and lying about your lawyerly threats, and lying about saving a few hundred dollars on a warranty just makes you more pathetic.