Dear Folks:  Twice now I have foolishly driven past the magic exit on the
freeway only to feel the stumble and surging indicating I have not been
watching the fuel guage very closely.  On both occasions I have literally
driven it until it wouldn't go any further however getting to a pump.  Upon
filling it the first time, it took 30 minutes or better to get it to
rewstart and I wrote this off as some sort of air trapped in the
fule/injector lines.  I ran the battery down needlessly and ended up push
starting it after a lot of mental stress.  This most recent time(last night
in a driving rain storm) I had the same thing happpen.  After only running
the battery down about half way this time, I decided to test the air lock
theory(on our Dodge Caravan 3.0 6 cyl. we were told to NEVER run it out of
gas for fear of the same problem) and slowly unscrewed the metal cap that
accesses the fitting where the fuel pressure guage goes for testing(this is
a 90 GL) as it was in plain sight down by the fuel pump block off plate
above the belt pulley.  To my surprise, as the cap was slowly removed, it
reminded me of the bubbling that happens during the airbleeding of the
radiator.  This was probably not the safest thing to do(power was off but
battery not disconnected), but it did start almost immediately upon re
trying the ignition switch.

  Is there another way to do this that could be safer or am I being a
little too over-cautious?  Relatively little fuel spilled out of the hole,
but then it doesn't take much to start a fire and in retrospect, I
should've pulled out the extinguisher and had it REAL handy just in case.

A couple of times I have felt the engine stumble and immediately filled the
tank and not had this problem.  TIA for any input you have

Dimwitted Moose and Flying Squirrel

Hey Bullwinkle, LOOK.. A message in a bottle....

HMMMM..... Fan mail from some Flounder?