No need to power off while refueling...

SOmething that is important is you should touch the car away from the fuel cap after you pick up the nozzle to ensure static is discharged and prevent a spark from the nozzle to the filler neck. This is a common cause of fueling fires.

 

Oh, and while a common misconception re diesel fuel, yes, it is often (but not always) harder to light, but it also burns much hotter and more dangerously.

Shut off any engine when you are refueling. Just because a spark will not usually ignite the fuel doesn't mean something on the vehicle will not fail and cause a problem. For example, current diesel cars are going to cat. converters. Suppose you had a failure in the fueling process and spilled liquid fuel under the red hot cat? Do you really want to find out if it would ignite? You might be able to "run away", but what about your passengers, sitting in your car? What about the other people at the gas station?

The problem with liquid fuels is they fall underneath your vehicle, and if they catch fire they toast the vehicle, the occupants, you, and anything else in the vicinity!

Shut off the engine when refueling. Oh, and just because your Prius turns off the engine when you stop, it doesn't guarantee it will stay off. Turn the thing off. We'll all be much safer. At a cost of two seconds of your time.

It's the law, of man and of physics/chemistry.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(David Beale @ Oct 10 2007, 01:53 PM) [snapback]523818[/snapback]</div>

Have you ever actually tried to ignite Diesel? My friend makes Bio and as a controlled experiment we attempted to light some. It was almost impossible.

Throw a match, the match goes out and nothing
Light a rolled sheet of paper and place it into the diesel, it burns like a candle and burns the immediate diesel next to it. It never actually lit the diesel and when the paper had burned out, it self extinguished.

Diesel is MUCH less volatile then Petrol and doesn't contain Benzene. Overall Diesel is a much safer fuel to store and to use, and it takes less energy to produce and gives off more energy when burned.

Blended Diesel (B50, B10 or even B100) is a very eco-friendly fuel compared to Petrol.....

 

The thought that stayed with me while reading these posts was pretty simple.....

Anything I can do to minimize the possibility of MY CAR EXPLODING is probably worth the effort of pushing a power button.

Doesn't it seem like a risk/reward issue? If the consequences were say, losing a dollar by not turning off my engine then it's maybe worth it. But with the potential consequence of an EXPLODING CAR I would need a much better benefit than not needing to take the 1/2 second it takes to push the power button twice.

I certainly hope my wife and children are not with me if I'm next to you at the fuel pump when your car explodes. I realize of course that it is a huge long shot but so is the lottery but I still play occasionally. Getting hit by lighting is rather unlikely as well, but as a general rule I take the 1/2 second to make the decision to NOT fly a kite or wave a metal pole around outside during a thunderstorm.

Maybe that's just me.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ecojosh @ Oct 10 2007, 01:58 PM) [snapback]523822[/snapback]</div>

Perhaps you should talk to the 3 people who died in the inferno after a tanker carrying diesel crashed in Edmonton a few years back. After you die and join them, of course. This vehicle burst into flames, and no, there were no people trying to light the diesel fuel. It didn't explode, which is what gasoline can do. BTW, you can drop lit matches into gasoline without a fire as well. It proves nothing!

The law says turn off your vehicle. Common sense says turn off your vehicle. If you don't you -could- qualify for a Darwin award!

 

Interesting! I have read all the posts and no one yet has mentioned that people who leave their cars running while filling it up are running a real risk of having some low life jump in their car and drive away with it! I suspect the Prius might pose a problem to the theif as they try to figure out how to shift the darn thing into "GO" mode (like I did for 5 min at the dealer when first trying to take home my baby!) :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Oct 9 2007, 04:31 PM) [snapback]523269[/snapback]</div>

I think the RX400H has a different fuel system than the Prius. As I understand it the door won't open unless it has detected and made sure that any fumes have been directed to an evaporation unit. The RX400H also does not allow the ICE to cycle on while the fuel door is open (at least according to a friend that owns one). Neither of these is the case with the Prius.

In reality...how hard is it to hit a button two times...even if the chance is 1 in 100,000 is it any big deal to turn the thing off? I guess leaving it on makes people feel special.

 

Adding to the diesel fire debate, has anyone tried boiling diesel and trying to light it then? This might more closely simulate the affect of spilling it on a hot exhaust then giving it a source of ignition. I think you would find it will burst into flames like it does coming out of the injectors in the engine.

Common sense says switch off the engine of any vehicle.
Another point is it's a good idea to touch the car away from the opened filler after you pick up the nozzle to disipate any static electricity. Static electricity is a major cause of petrol station fires.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Husker4theSpurs @ Oct 9 2007, 02:01 PM) [snapback]523188[/snapback]</div>

That's awful -- so sorry to hear that. Do you know how the fire started?

 

Funny that I should see this thread today. Just this morning, while filling up, I witnessed the triple whammy. A woman in an Accord, gets out yapping on the cell phone, with her car still on (dogs in car), and starts to fill up the tank. Then, incredulously, she lit a cigarette. There were about 5 of us at the station, and all of us simultaneously started screaming at her to put out the cigarette. With a look of disdain at all of us, and still on the phone, she ground out her cancer stick on the ground RIGHT BELOW HER GAS tank. I didn't even bother to fill up the rest of the $5 still left on the fillup. I just got the heck out of there.

I'd like to nominate this woman for a future Darwin candidate.

 

:lol: Come on folks .... all those who advocate leaving the vehicle running while fuelling are trolls. Anyone intelligent enough to own a Prius would never post such nonsense.
Gary

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ecojosh @ Oct 10 2007, 04:58 PM) [snapback]523822[/snapback]</div>

Ha... Don't you believe it! After the quadruple hurricanes hit us in Kissimmee, FL, we were left with tons of tree debris all over our 2 acre property. We mounded it up, and poured diesel on it, and burned it until it was just ash.

I'm talking freshly downed trees and tree parts mounded up to over 8 feet high, probably about a 20 foot circle (and we did this at least 5-6 times to get rid of it all!), reduced to mere ashes!

Diesel CAN definitely burn! It was not hard to get it started either!

:blink:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Miss_Taz @ Oct 30 2007, 08:28 AM) [snapback]532369[/snapback]</div>

Taz, Josh wasn't saying it wouldn't burn. He was saying (accurately) that it is much more difficult to ignite than gasoline.

A flammable liquid needs to be heated at least to its flash point (the point at which it begins to emit flammable vapors, which actually is what burns) before it will ignite, and slightly higher to sustain combustion. With diesel fuel's flash point of 143F, substantial heating of the fuel itself is necessary before it will ignite. (Gasoline's flash point is -40F, which is what makes it so dangerous.)

In firefighting training years ago we would practice extinguishment of flammable liquid fires with large pans (several feet across) of diesel fuel. It took several seconds of holding a lit traffic flare to the surface of the fuel for it to ignite, and several more seconds for sustained combustion. Then the resulting small flame would slowly grow as it heated the fuel at its leading edge.

In your case, as you found, a small amount spread over other combustible material is easy to ignite. You weren't dealing with a container of diesel, where the liquid's convective cooling substantially retards the heating process and, therefore, the emission of flammable vapors.

 

Refueling stations are very dangerous places to visit, because of everything that is going on around you that you see, and what you do not see. The guy beside you filling the gas can could accidentally knock it over and splash you with fuel, the rest spills under your car onto the hot pavement, that has been cooking in the sun all day. Shutting off your vehicle to refuel it is the law here in PA. There is no option in our law for kids in the car or dogs or grandparents. Rule and laws are put into place to hopefully bring order to a place where there is none. If you trace the origin of incidents at refueling stations, you will find that a small act of respect for the dangerous environment and people around them, would have stopped disaster. There are no take-backs in life or with serious burns.

 

Having read all the posts on this topic the conclusion I come to is that people are just plain lazy. I mean give me a break, not turning your car off when you fill it up violates the rules posted clearly at all gas stations. Shut off your engine. Hello? What part of "no" don't you understand?

People want to be cool and not follow rules. But I think more than anything else, this just really shows that people are lazy, and they're not afraid to admit it in a public forum.

I agree with another poster. To those who admitted you don't bother to shut your car off at the pump, don't bother to use your seatbelts either. That way when you're hit head on and take flight out your windshield, the rest of us can get your real estate right where we need it.

 

The only reason I can think of to not turn off the Prius while refueling is because it tends to want to run the engine shortly after power-on, regardless of how hot the engine is.

But that's not compelling enough for me, I'm afraid. And all the other reasons I've seen just don't make sense. It's all rationalization.

 

I too can't believe this debate is going on, but I'm on the side of those who leave the car on.

The car is on, the engine is off and I have complied with the law. That is because I've waited until the engine shuts off if it was on when I drove up to the pump, and then shift to N and put the parking brake on. The engine won't start, even if the main battery is being depleted. However, in the two minutes it takes to refuel the battery won't be depleted much, even with the A/C running. (It has never happened, but if I drove up with only the last two bars showing I probably would turn the car off.)

And if the car isn't turned off it won't have to go through another warm-up cycle. The gas guage works fine on my Prius too.

 

This is where a Underwriters Lab (UL) video demonstration would work wonders...

Ever see the ones on Christmas trees? Or Turkey fryers? Scary stuff.

Gasoline is scary stuff too...

 

The chances of winning the lottery are something like one in a million.
But strangely enough, someone is bound to win the lottery almost every week.
Thats because something like a million people buy lottery tickets every week.

The chances of a Prius catching on fire while refueling for some yet unknown reason because of being left on is something like one in a million.
But there will soon be something like a million Prii on the road.
If everyone leaves their Prii on while refueling, then sooner or later one of them is bound to catch on fire for some yet unknown reason.

Reminds me of the guy who jumped out of the tenth floor window. As he fell past an open window on the sixth floor, he was heard saying "so far, so good".