Running on empty
DO you want to drive me over to Freshta’s house quickly to pick up some soup?” I lazily ask the Fella one evening. I’m fortunate that my Iraqi friend Freshta lives nearby and equally fortunate that, in true Iraqi style, she’s always cooking huge quantities of food. Collecting such offerings in a sociallydistanced manner on their doorstep is a highlight of lockdown.
With just over an hour to spare before an online meeting, the Fella agrees to soup collection, as well as a brief supermarket stop so I can buy an unusual drab olive green Tupperware box set I have been coveting. After all, who doesn’t need to jazz up their kitchen cabinets and Land Rover interiors with a little more drab olive?
“I need fuel, though, and there’s not time to go to the petrol station,” he says. We had motored to and from our governmentsanctioned afternoon countryside walk with the Discovery’s fuel light on but, having no experience of driving vehicles with a fuel light, I don’t know how far one can actually go before the situation turns critical.
Departing from our brief doorstep interaction with three pots of soup, the Fella starts the engine and the Discovery’s key falls apart in his hand. This key has always been a wretched thing, prone to disintegration but, as it’s the spare, this hadn’t posed much of a problem until, in the last fortnight, the main key mysteriously went missing.
Cursing, he drives on towards the supermarket “We don’t have to go now if there isn’t time,” I assure him but he says it’s fine, as long as I’m quick. When I emerge with the drab olive Tupperware, he abandons a solitaire game and turns the metal remains of the key. Nothing. No sound at all. “It’s run out of fuel!” He cries despairingly, adding with apocalyptic pathos: “That’s it!”
I phone my brother Nick, who also lives near this sleepy backwater and who, luckily, is in our bubble. “Alright mate, we’ve run out of fuel. I don’t suppose you have some diesel hanging around in a jerrycan, do you?” He doesn’t think so, but promises to check.
The Fella sinks low in his seat and says miserably: “We were only meant to be popping out for soup. I’ve got no socks on.”
I vaguely recollect someone once saying it was catastrophic to run a diesel vehicle down to empty. I Google it and read depressing stories regarding the need for “professional assistance” to facilitate restarting the engine.
In an attempt to alleviate the guilt I feel about the Tupperware mission, I put the broken key back together, just in case this was a contributing factor. The Fella tries the key. The usual alert board of doom, that regularly assures us that there is some problem with the Discovery, for once offers no fault, apart from stating the obvious:
“He suggests we pump the accelerator to get the fuel through (it’s a diesel) and makes flattering comments about the Discovery which he refers to as a classic Range Rover”
“passenger door open.”
We sit in awkward silence until the Fella remembers the soup, still hot from Freshta’s stove. He slurps down one pot while I phone Nick to check on progress. He has emptied his garden shed to reach an empty jerrycan and is driving to a garage to fill it.
I approach a security guard having a smoke to gauge the possibility of leaving the Discovery in the car park overnight, if we’ve run it dry and need professional help to restart it. He suggests we may need to pump the accelerator pedal for a full minute to get the fuel through (I don’t mention that it’s diesel) and makes lots of flattering comments about the Discovery, which he mistakenly refers to as classic Range Rover (it is dark), and being worth a lot of money (which it is not).
Back at the Discovery, the Fella, revived from his malaise by the soup, is pulling the driver’s floor apart and muttering: “Something else fell out of that key, I heard it drop.” He brandishes the key parts around, explaining that the lock function is also dead, so there’s something missing.
Also absent was the usual choking engine noise one would expect when trying to start an engine with only dregs of fuel. I regret taking the ‘replacement key’ option off my RAC policy, to bring the renewal fee down to a more manageable figure.
He eventually produces a small misshapen circuit board in which is lodged a round flat battery from under the driver’s seat. We rebuild the key and the Fella immediately wants to try it. “Noooooooooo!” I cry, full of the horror stories I have read online. “We have fuel coming, so please let’s put that in first!”
Nick’s souped-up Ranger cruises into the carpark – the cavalry has arrived. He winds down the window and says to the Fella: “If you’ve run out of diesel and it’s not something else, I’m never going to let you forget it, mate.” He’s the type of organised driver who prioritises mechanical matters and says to me in shocked undertones that he hasn’t seen a fuel light on either of his vehicles since the time his wife had charge of one for a fortnight.
“It’s very bad for an engine to let it run so low,” he informs us. ‘‘My mechanic says you should never let it get below a quarter of a tank!”
The tank filled, the Fella turns the rebuilt key, and the engine throbs back into life. I soothingly point out that he can still make his meeting, albeit half an hour late, and we take the remaining soup over to the Ranger, as compensation for Nick’s evening being interrupted.
“See those lights over there?” Nick asks, back behind the wheel. “Do you know what that is?” We both turn and look through the darkness towards an illuminated sign on the horizon, as Nick delivers his parting shot: “That’s a petrol station!”