Awesome that you made to Yosemite !
and Los Banos is sure not a place one would want to be buying gas i
suspect- price wise.
I dislike carrying any fuel in a gas can of board of
course...........but what comfort knowing you had a gallon say stashed.
and .......if traffic will allow it..............you drop down the about
35 to 42 mph, drive in very high gear at about 12 % throttle, and you
cuuld squease out 28 mpg on a gasoline vanagon.

at 14.1 you were down there all right.
Pumping a 2WD Vanagon tank bone dry on purpose, like to remove it from
the van, i've gotten way over 2 gallons out of them after the gague was
on 'zero-nothing.'
 Does yours do this - I've had this a few times, in two vanagons I can
think of.............when the gague needle gets to the top of the
red.........
it swings a bit.............one minute it'll show top of the
red.........a few minutes later it'll be a good couple of needle width's
above top of the red.

21.5 is decent mileage.
talk about what fuel prices 'were'..........
in the mid 90's..........diesel was $ 1.48 per gal.
I had a 5 speed 1.9TD GL Vanagon, with a 10 gal aux tank.
Several times i went 600 miles on the odometer with that total fuel
load, and refueled..............like after 615 miles - for $ 28.00 !!!
Not too shabby,

Sorry to go on - am inviting everyone, including diesel people,  to
calculate  miles per dollar.  That's what *really* matters after all.

Say my turbo volvo sedan, Inga.................say she gets 20 mpg on
4.00 dollar per gallon gas- that's 5 miles per dollar.
Just running #'s in my head..............I can show that a TD vanagon
getting 26 mpg on  $ 5.00 per gallon fuel..............is only doing 5.2
miles per dollar - barely better - though you can sleep and cook in the
TD vanagon !
( but a gasoline vanagon or Westy at 20 mpg at $ 4.00 gallon is doing
the same miles/dollar as that  740 turbo volvo sedan, but then the
Vanagon can't go just 80 anywhere, and not blow around in the wind
either ! )

My all time record btw..........in the 70's.................I put 100
dollars into an envelope, and drove a 56 VW Bus ( probably mid to high
20's mpg ) all around Nevada and down to North Rim of the Grand Canyon
etc, until that 100 bucks was gone .
This hardly sounds believable, but i have it in my head that i went
3,300 miles on that hundred bucks..........or maybe ti was 2,300 - that
sounds better- it was 1973, the first gas crisis, and fuel was
..................under a dollar for sure........
but i got t 23 miles per dollar at least  - my all time record, and
probably never to be exceeded by something you can sleep and cook in, or
carry a ton of junk in.

glad you made it to a gas station !
what relief !  oh please, please just be open, I almost don't care what
it costs, I just need that precious go juice !

Do you happen to know btw, if your California gas is 10 % ethanol like
all our Oregon gas is now ?
thnx,
scott
www.turbovans.com

David Kao wrote:
> 3 weeks ago I nearly ran out of gas on my way back out of Yosemite
> on HWY 152 at Los Banos. The gauge was bottomed out. When the needle
> passed bottom edge of the red zone on the gauge I was still 12 miles
> from the next gas station. I thought I blew it and would have to pull
> over waiting for who knows what aid would come to rescue me.
>
> Fortunately I made it to a gas station. The bill was $56. I pumped
> 14.1 gallon of gas into the gas tank. The gas mileage of the trip
> was 21.5 MPG. That included going up to and coming back down
> from Yosemite with nearly a full tank of gas. A full tank of gas
> in 1984 was around $10 only.
>
> David
>
> --- J Stewart <fonman4277@COMCAST.NET> wrote:
>
>
>> <I'm just
>> 'shocked' that I can put over $40 in a VW bus... I'd have been more
>> shocked if I'd have had to pay for that other 6 gal too.>
>>
>>
>>
>> Get used to it-in a few weeks that $42.00 will seem like a bargain! After Natural Bus next
>> weekend I probably won't be venturing further than 50 miles from home in the Westy for the rest
>> of the summer.   Jeff
>>
>>
>
>
>