Running out of Gas?

abctriplets said:

Quick engine question. (it's a snowmobile engine, if it matters). The sound of an engine running out of gas - could you describe it as the broken noise of misfires - or is that not accurate?

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The sound would depend on whether it's a carb or fuel injected engine, or if you throttle the motor while it runs out. If it's idle, the sound would be idle and then it dies. If you're revving, it would moan, with maybe a sputter and then zonk with a carb model. A snowmobile is like any other motor.

They're putting out fuel injected models now. I have a neighbor with one of those. I can ask him, but my guess is that it just zonks without much drama since there's nothing to inject whereas a carb has a float bowl.

If it's being run, it would feel like it suddenly ran out of power. So you're running along and then it starts to die. So you dial down the throttle and it seems fine again, but you rev and it starts to die, and you let go and it's fine, and then suddenly it just cuts out.

If you're running it, not at idle, you might hear it cough a couple of times as it gets the last few drops of gas from the carb, then nothing except the occasional ticking of the cooling engine.

abctriplets said:

That's what I'm looking for. If you're still at a full throttle when it dies. What makes the sputtering? Is it misfiring cylinders or something? (I know nothing about engines...just wondering what would be causing the noise)

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There'll be impurities which have settled to the bottom of the tank. When the petrol is really low, they'll start getting picked up and pumped through the engine. Which is why it's a good idea not to get into this situation, incidentally.

I used to have a motorbike (1998 Suzuki GSXR1100WR) which had a reserve switch for fuel. Quite a few times I'd be driving along and it would suddenly lose power and I'd have to quickly lean down and twist the switch to get the fuel going again.

When it happened at a standstill the engine just slowed and stopped.

As far as I know, never having looked at a snowmobile, they're more akin to motorbikes than cars.

Years ago, the family's car was stolen, so my father put a kill switch in the glove compartment. If a thief stole the car again, he'd get half a block before the car would run out of gas. The only people it ever trapped was us!

It was somewhat similar to losing power--the car shut off and stopped. But, just as a note, when the car's power goes off, everything goes off. Once time I'd replaced my alternator, and the refurbished one was bad (it stopped recharging, so I was running on the battery until it went dry). I'm driving down a 45 mile hour road and the radio goes off first. Then, while I'm still going, "Huh?" the rest of it shut off. Silent. All I could do was use the momentum of the car to get to the side of the road. When our car ran out of gas, we still had lights and radio.