There’s no official rules for what makes a valid, viable car accessory. Really, it can be pretty much anything that somehow works with or on or around a car, and that seems to be what the makers of this thing, the Remington Products (Canada) Ltd GAS-MINDER, were counting on. Because this may be the most minimal, ridiculous, half-assinest car “accessory” I’ve ever seen. Let’s look at what it does, though even using “does” as a verb is pretty generous. Mostly what this thing does is exist.
The GAS-MINDER seems to be designed to work with cars like the pre-’62 Volkswagen Beetle (and a number of other European cars of the era) that lack a gas gauge, and instead have a reserve fuel tank.
In the case of the Beetle, the reserve tank held 1.3 gallons – good for about 37 miles of travel – and was accessed with a little lever under the dashboard that had three positions: main tank, fuel supply off, and reserve tank. You can see the lever here, and, because this owner’s manual page is from 1961 when Beetles started (midway through that year’s production run) to have actual fuel gauges instead, you can see that also:
I’m pretty sure most people preferred having a real fuel gauge. But, if you didn’t, and just had the reserve fuel tap, you could order yourself a GAS-MINDER:
The Remington Products (Canada) Ltd. company claims this thing is “BETTER THAN A GAS GAUGE” and I suppose that’s true if you had no concept of what a gas gauge actually does. The GAS-MINDER is a little reflective magnet that reads ON RESERVE, and you’re supposed to stick it on your dash when you switch over to the reserve tank, so, I guess, you don’t forget and run out of gas somewhere.
That’s it! That’s all it is! A little magnet! The ad just says to slap it under the dash when you’re not using the reserve tank, so you don’t, you know, get confused. This is basically a post-it note. I like how they boldly say “NEVER RUN OUT OF GAS AGAIN,” too, as though this was some kind of guarantee of that, somehow.
I’m impressed, really. I’d also love to have heard the pitch for how this was better than a gas gauge, too. I guess gas gauges can be pretty confusing, with their, um, one needle and all those two letters. Well, to be fair, the VW gauge used 1/1, 1/2 and R (for Reserve) so there are fractions involved.
I wonder if they also offered a set of SPEED-MINDER magnets, where you could just stick a little magnet with 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 and so on on the dash, depending on how fast you were going. Seems like that would be BETTER THAN A SPEEDOMETER, right?
Jeeeeeez.
As a kid, my father bought a Rabbit diesel during the fears of fuel rationing. It was the first time I ever remember being stranded at the side of the road. The car ran out of fuel; dad claimed his cars always had the “low-fuel” idiot light prior to that Volkswagen..
I must admit that despite my work van (2018 Hiace) having a perfectly useful and large fuel gauge, plus a ‘kms to empty’ readout on the dash cluster, I carry a business card with FUEL written on the back with Sharpie in the centre console that I can wedge in the instrument surround so it sits right in line of sight to remind me. Going from job to job on a tight schedule means I need to avoid having to do detours to refuel and have to fit fuel stops into a tight schedule, plus be prepared for unexpected breakdown jobs changing my schedule or route. So I just use the card as a reminder that I’m going to need to factor in a fuel stop on my run rather than knowing I have enough fuel for the whole day’s work.
It’s pretty easy to do running around in a work truck. I’ve cut myself more than once heading out into the great beyond and then turning around and fueling up first. I never would have believed I could suck down 25 gallons of gas in a day but it’s not hard.
Hmmm not seeing many old school motorcycle riders here, this is actually a good product, however hyperbolic (shocking!!) the ad copy is.
This same type of valve is used on Motorcycles, at least up to a certain year, beats me when. And like the Beetle a decent motorcycle (an indecent one being the 80s Nighthawk, yes you!) has about a half gallon of reserve a least, meaning a good 20-30 miles.
So here you are, coming home after a long day, the motorcycle sputters and you switch to reserve. You continue home, because who wants to stop? It’s just another couple miles home and you will get gas in the morning. The next day you get up, coffee, poop, shower and get on the motorcycle to go to work, the bike starts to sputter and you go to switch to reserve….. oh…..
I used to combat this by always turning the tap to “main” when I parked, that way I hit reserve again.
I have only run out of gas twice ever, both on a motorcycle, once in the aforementioned Nighthawk as the reserve was only good for about 0.05 miles.
The second time based on the scenario of leaving it on reserve and forgetting to fill up. I was bringing my son to school that morning. He was panicked as he thought the engine running was how the bike stayed up. I was able to slosh enough gas to the tap side and “briskly” made my way to a gas station, maintaining as much speed as possible (through some creative “roadway” liberties) literally coasting up to the pump having completely run dry a block away.
So while the “idea” is you will stop for gas as soon as you hit reserve, what if it happens as you pull into your neighborhood, or the parking lot of work? You try to remember to get it later, but oh so many distractions. That’s why you need the GAS-MINDER!!
That’s one of the things I like about my old BMW Airhead, they have two fuel taps, so I have a double reserve which I define as “find gas soon”, followed by “find gas right now”. I also have a reliable trip odometer which helps
I ran my VTX1100 out of fuel and coasted an off-ramp that left me at the bottom of a decent hill. Pushed the bike almost a mile, geared up, on a hot summer night to the gas station. Probably definitely almost died from the heat. Talking to my bar customers the next day, laughing about my stupidity, one of them commented how it was strange that my bike didn’t have a fuel reserve switch. I had recently bought it, and my last bike had a digital gauge. We went out to check, and there it was. I pushed it all that way with a half gallon still in the tank lol.
Oh no!!! lol
The nighthawk was new to me at the time, so I never ran it low before. When it ran out, I had enough in my wallet to get a can and some gas, so I started walking. This was south Phoenix in the early 90s. Almost right a way a taxi stopped, I told the driver I didn’t have money, he said something to the effect of his conscience wouldn’t let him let me walk in this neighborhood at night. Yikes. The Circle K was a circus. I can’t remember if the the cabbie drove me back, it wasn’t far so I don’t think so? Anyway, I put a gallon of gas in the bike and it still wouldn’t start. Oh yeah, it had one of those fancy vacuum operated petcocks, however no “prime” position, no gas in the carbs, no start, no vacuum. OK, I’m gonna have to suck on it… Of course the line is so dried from AZ weather it wasn’t coming off the connections. I took out my swiss army knife and cut the line, sucked on the hose, got the bike running and…. I cut the line, no vacuum no gas. A buddy taught me to maintain a decent tank bag, which included some electrical tape. I was able to tape up the line and finally get home to an irate wife.
Haha, these situation suck pretty bad when they are happening, but at least they make for great stories! And roadside repairs are where true mechanics are forged.
It’s true (on both counts)… To risk being the “old man yells at cloud” I think carrying tools isn’t something that is done anymore. While cars have been appliances for a long time, I think getting by with a cell phone and a credit card is relatively new in the bike world.
Here I thought it was going to be some poorly done “low fuel light”, but no, it isn’t. They just made it look like that.
Still, no fuel gauge in the 60s? With the frunk fuel tank, would it have been difficult and expensive to have a simple gauge? Nothing more than a hinged rod with the float at one end and “gauge” at the other end. No electrical, wires or mechanical cables.
I wish I had one of those magnets for my bank account. Just one little zero stuck in to the left of the decimal point would work. By the way, for the person who invented zero…….thanks for nothing.
Actually not too terrible an idea depending on circumstances. When my parents were first married they had two (!!) cars, a 1949 Ford and an oval-window VW Beetle, both bought at a few years of age, in the mid-1950s, and they would park them single-file in their driveway. They would just take whatever car wasn’t blocked for commuting to work or running errands; consequently since both my parents would take turns driving the Beetle it wasn’t always a given that whoever was driving the Beetle would know they were on reserve. More than once they’d have the Beetle start stuttering and go to flip the reserve lever only to find it already on reserve. That was a rare occurrence, though, as my parents were pretty good about reminding each other. For more absent-minded types with such car-sharing arrangements, though, such a magnet might’ve actually been helpful. However, 75 cents in the mid-50s would’ve been nearly 9 dollars in today’s dollars so a bit steep for a piece of magnetic metal with some printing on it, “HIGHLY REFLECTIVE” quality and “mailed prepaid anywhere in North America” notwithstanding.
I can see this if you are sharing a car. Maybe you flip to the reserve just before getting home, and this serves to let the next driver (or remind you) that it needs gas.
Regarding dishwasher Clean/Dirty. You only need 2 rules:
If you can’t fit your dish in, it is clean so unload it.
I can fit all the dinner plates and most of the cutlery in before the dishwasher is full. So then I’m stuck washing by hand to have enough plates and/or forks if I’m waiting for a full machine.
Similarly, I can quickly fill the top rack with work lunch tupperware before I fill the bottom, leaving me nothing in which to pack my lunch
You, sir/madam, simply need more dishes.
There’s always room for one more…
Cars, yes.
This is about as useful as the clean/dirty sign for the dishwasher.
How about: “place a full one-gallon gas tank in your frunk.”
Thanks to a very fucked up fuel line system and a glass milk bottle attached to a breather tube, my Beetle does this on its own.
If you’re the kind of person who forgets you’re running on reserve, you are also the kind of person who will forget to put your magnetic reminder up, especially if you’ve stuck it beneath the dash.
I bet if you had this magnet and a Fuel Shark®, you would never have to buy gas ever again!
This reminds me of one of my favorite corporate speak euphemisms: MVP – Minimum Viable Product.
Appears to have been Remington Products (Canada), Ltd.’s corporate motto.
I like how the ad graphic makes it appear to be illuminated- a red light that automatically lit up while running on reserve actually would be legitimately useful
My dad used to use a trick when he needed to remember to do something. He would stick a little piece of tape on his watch. That way, when he looked at his watch, it would remind him.
Problem was, he never remembered the thing he needed to do, only that he needed to do something.
I feel like this has the same problem. If you remember to place and remove the magnet/note, then you also remembered to flip the tank switch. But forget one and you likely forget both, so it is accomplishing nothing at all.
Homer : Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you’ve got the power inside you right now. Use it, and send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield.
Also; DON’T PANIC
Now that would be a great sci-fi joke that 3 people would get. (All Autopian readers, of course.)
i suppose this was handy in a one-car family. possibly even a divorce-preventative.
Yes, my wife refuses to pump her own gas (and we are not in NJ).
We can’t really expect too much from a company that misspells ‘gauge’ in their own ad. According to them, the magnet is “BETTER THAN A FUEL GWAHJ”.
The initial VW approach – on/off/reserve, no gauge – was used on a lot of motorcycles, too. On one occasion I had somewhere to be and was zipping along on the Ninja 250 when the engine started to cough a bit. No problem, I thought, and reached down to switch the petcock to reserve.
It was already on reserve. Merde.
Happily I was close to the destination and was able to nurse the bike along (i.e. not get stranded) but it was a clench-inducing event. If only I’d had a magnet…
That’s where I was going to go too! With my old bugs, pre-gauge, the reserve worked great until you forgot to flip the lever after filling. Oops. I suppose the magnet reminded you to flip it? Maybe?
I miss those, my bmw just has a reserve light, which of course no longer works so I just have to go by the trip meter. Which is also incorrect because like all r1200s it’s off by more than 10%. I miss simpler times.
Plot twist: the typo was intentional, as this is in no way better than a fuel gauge, and they knew it; that’s how they thought they’d avoid liability for false advertisement.
I kinda like it, just for how rare and prized it must be today. Seems like you’d get extra points at a concours for having one.
And I’d love to have something like that for my motorcycle actually. If anything, to remind me to flip the reserve pickup switch BACK to the regular position once I fill up.
This person gets it. 🙂
I tried to stay in the habit of including the petcock setting in the preflight checks, but occasionally slipped.
One time, I was having problems (resulted in getting stranded and pushing bike a few miles home) that ended up being mostly an ethanol chuck blockage.
But mechanic then tells me I think you need a new petcock, but no, not that petcock, the other one.
“There’s two??” “Yeah, right under the tank. It’ll take a couple of weeks to get it, so just come back then; in the meantime, ride around with it on reserve, you’ll be fine.” Jeeze I hated doing that.
One thing they don’t teach you in the Basic Rider Course is no matter how cool your bike is, nobody looks cool pushing it. I’m just thankful I had a full-face helmet on the day mine died 2 miles from home.
On the plus side, I count vehicle exercise like that as a workout.
Like when I pushed my dead 911 across a long driveway and back into the garage by myself. Since I’m no gym rat, I was grateful for mostly level surfaces then.
I’d put that right next to my “Nicht mit der Wagenfahrer Sprechen” plaque. The brilliance of vintage Vee-Dub accessories is unmatched today.
BTW, I had a ’54 Beetle for a short time, and loved it dearly. Like its previous owner, I kept a little notebook and recorded every fill-up and the mileage. Never ran out of gas.
Had a CJ-5 with fuel gauge problems, ran out of gas a few times. My solution was to write down the last 3 digits of the odometer reading on the dashboard with a grease pencil whenever I filled up.
I 3d printed a little counter that I can dial to the last 3 digits of the odo when I fill up. Some quick mental math on the odometer and I know how far I have gone on the tank. (’64 Corvair with a suspect fuel gauge and without a trip odometer)
Nice! Certainly a more elegant solution than mine. I wouldn’t want to write on a nice Corvair dash with a grease pencil. IIRC it wasn’t so easy to erase so I had to cross them out.
At first I thought..nah there are others, but then upon review I have to agree. At least those “Der Drizzleflippen” stickers provided a chuckle. This though…well maybe for those sliding into dementia?
It’s more effective than a Fuelshark.
Beat me to it. Well done!
I don’t think those Beetles had cigarette lighters.
This reminds me of the dishwasher magnets that say whether the contents are clean or dirty.
If they’re clean, put them away!
If you’re on reserve, Fill Up!
No. This is not how we do things. If they’re in the dishwasher, they are clean. We put them in the sink, and then I load and run the dishwasher every morning, and everything is clean by the time everyone else wakes up. Then we use them throughout the day, and I will put the remainder away the next morning. This works better because with little kids who can’t reach the upper cabinets, they can get stuff out of the dishwasher and I don’t have to constantly get them everything.
That explanation was entirely too much for this early in the morning, and for that I apologize. But not sincerely enough to delete any of the above.
I know a guy who has two dishwashers, he takes stuff out of the one that’s just cleaned and puts it back in the other one. He doesn’t ever put plates away, they live in the dishwashers.
Long term it’s costs no more because he uses each one half as much.
I keep thinking about this looking for the sense of it… But this is just weird, right?
If you have space for two dishwashers, you definitely have cabinets.
Is there something awesome in the cabinets not occupied by dishes? That could sway me.
It’s an intriguing enough idea that I keep sharing it, but weird enough that I won’t actually do it myself.
If I replaced the cupboard I keep my plates in with a second dishwasher I’d get no less storage, and also never have to empty a dishwasher ever again.
But also I’d then have two dishwashers that my fiancée has boobytrapped with a bowl-shaped thing the wrong way up, full of dishwasher soup.
Then you could also wash dishes and auto parts at the same time.
Two clothes washers makes logical sense, but two dishwashers seems like crazy town to me
Does it make sense to have two clothes washers instead of clothes storage? Only if you normally store your just-washed clothes in a damp twisted bundle.
I hang mine up to dry, then put them in a wardrobe.
I need two dryers. Getting a load dried is the long pole in the tent on laundry day – dry cycle is twice as long as the wash cycle. This was the big benefit of laundromats back in the day when we needed them.
Earlier this year, I bought a GE washer dryer combo. Thing is awesome. Takes half the space of previous laundry and if I was feeling crazy I could get another one.
You could do two loads at the same time, like a laundromat at home
You could race them.
And here comes number 2 barely out of the second rinse cycle, number 1 trying to keep up draining its first rinse, wow number 2 is on the spin and by golly it’s spinning fast
I bought my retired parents such a magnet and they loved it; as soon as one of them started the cycle, they’d flip it to CLEAN, so if the other came across it later, they’d know to put it away. Such are the things that make retired life a little better I guess!
Boy, do I have a dash magnet they’re gonna love!
Not my dad! He was the guy that as soon as it’s less than a 3/4 of a full tank, gotta fill up!!
Had a girlfriend in HS that was terrified if her gas gauge got anywhere near 1/2, she believed she could run out of fuel at any moment.
We have one, and with kids it’s handy as one of the chores my eldest has is to empty the dishwasher. The dishwasher has a little light that says “clean”, but if someone opens the dishwasher it goes off and then there’s the question of “were these clean” for anyone that comes along after and sees it’s still full. It’s a gimmick, but it IS handy when many people are involved in the process.
Yesterday I loaded the dishwasher but didn’t want to run it until I got home in the evening. I put a clean cup on the counter to remind me. Wife found the clean cup and put it away. SHE NEVER PUTS ANYTHING AWAY!!!
Dishes were still dirty this morning.
We may have the same wife.