A Welcome Technical Issue
In the 5.5 years I've owned my Insight, it's been highly reliable. Only two real problems have occurred. The first happened several years ago as the result of a bad LAF sensor and while minor, was turned into a horrible mess by Honda. Thus, it was not so much an Insight issue as it was a Honda issue.
The 2nd problem occurred approximately half an hour ago. As I backed out of the driveway, the car began sputtering and bucking. Just as I entered the street it stalled. Momentarily confused, I checked my gauges and found out that yes, I had run out of fuel. Now I'm normally a gauge watcher. Not much happens on the dash that I don't pay attention to. But in this case the Insight has almost trained me to virtually ignore the fuel level gauge until the distance covered by the FCD is about 10x the current mileage figure. It seems that in the past few days I had been making many short trips and had driven far beyond what I would consider the caution point regarding available fuel.
Anyway, that's not the problem. I always carry an extra gallon of fuel in the secret storage compartment so with that in hand I attempted to open the fuel door and was a bit amused by the fact that the lever had seized solid, presumably form disuse. Indeed, a bit of inspection revealed that the lever had rusted solidly in place and would not budge even with considerable force applied. A quick trip to the house for some white lithium grease and within a few minutes I had the lever freed to so I could refuel the car.
In the future, I'll be adding "grease fuel door lever" to my list of things to do every oil change so this "problem" can be avoided.
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