Tired of a little gas spilling out after the gas pump nozzle clicks? This is the likely reason.
Ever take your new car out for its first fill-up it spills a little gas out after you leave it to fill and it automatically shuts off?
That’s what happened to Redditor /u/FlyGodd every time they filled up their 2023 KIA K5, a little gas spilled out flowing down the gas filler’s drain hole and onto the ground every. single. time.
They got so fed up they filmed it happening and posted about it on Reddit.
Their thread is linked here, with a copy of their video below (mirror here just in case imgur goes down.)
The video shows a gas pump nozzle inserted in her KIA K5 cocked at an angle (which is important to note.) It’s automatically pumping and just about full.
You can hear a click, the pump stops filling, and several ounces of gas spill out.
That’s not supposed to happen.
Thankfully, members of /r/Kia pointed out the error of her ways, the solution far more simple than she ever would’ve thought.
As mentioned and if you’ll notice, her nozzle isn’t inserted all the way into the gas filler neck.
Because her nozzle isn’t fully inserted into her gas tank filler neck, the sensor hole at the end of the nozzle is now higher than where it’s supposed to be.
When fuel hits it, it’s actually more than full, causing an overflow situation.
Or as /u/Bong2687 puts it, “You don’t have the nozzle in all the way.”
There are better understandable explanation of how gas pump nozzles know your tank is full, but basically there are two hoses inside a nozzle, one that puts fuel into your tank and another where, due to fuel flowing, is drawing air back into the nozzle.
There’s a little hole at the end of the nozzle for air to get sucked into and, when that hole is covered by fuel (your tank is full,) suction of air stops causing a gate inside the nozzle to shut and stopping the flow of gas.
Here’s one such explanation.
Fuel can also spill out if you purposely keep pumping after the sensor inside stops the flow of gas (most commonly referred to as topping off.)-
But that’s it, if your new or new-to-you car spills gas every time you set the nozzle on auto, and it spills after clicking, 9 times out of 10, you don’t have the nozzle inserted fully.
