When driving a vehicle you are not familiar with, did you know there is a simple way to know which side of the vehicle the the filler cap is on?

Its in your dash info, which side it’s on. :)

There’s an arrow or dot indicator on newer cars, but I like to check ahead of time.

As an aside, but this is in the social section, so…. last summer, kid and I rented a cargo van as a part of her Girl Scouts Gold Award project. Anyway, we loaded it to prep for the 700 or so mile weekend round-trip. After loading, we looked for the tank and couldn’t find it, I had no idea. Not good for a professional driver. Anyway, we took it back to rental place, asked the guy. He came out, looked, had trouble finding, too. He finally found it in, like, the drivers door jamb, I think it’s called. Yes, the door had to be opened to fill the tank, and there was no cap for the tank. Weird.

I know on the instrument panel, there’s a picture of a gas tank with an arrow, indicating which side of the car you fill up on.

Yeah, been handy. I have yet to drive a car that did not have the arrow.

Knew that.

I wonder how they would indicate where the fill point is on cars where it’s behind the license plate.

Cars these days do have that. My wife’s cousin had an old 1950’s car that didn’t have that. Looking at where to put the fuel in, I couldn’t find it. He showed me the rear tail light was hinged and the fill spout was there.

I’ve known for years. Definitely a good little helper.

Yes, in 1986 Jim Moylan who worked for Ford came up with the idea after getting soaked from a rainstorm when he went to the wrong side of his company car. He forwarded a memo suggesting the little gas tank icon with the arrow to the powers that be. Well, it was 1989 before they actually implemented the idea. & then it was only on a limited number of models.

Mercedes claim that they had added a little red arrow on one of their cars in 1976, but it didn’t light up until the car was low on fuel. Hence, Jim is given credit for what we have now!!!

I learned it by noticing….

However as @LadyMarissa wrote, it wasn’t on ALL cars until the 1980s.

I haven’t seen one on my 91 Nissan.

I’ve never noticed such a thing.

On the fuel gauge, picture of a gas pump has an arrow pointing one way or the other .
@seawulf575 as a kid my parents had an old 58 olds stationwagon and the filler was under the tail light fin.
@kritiper my 2017 nissan has it .

@SQUEEKY2 My 97 Nissan didn’t have it and my sister’s 02 Ford Focus doesn’t have it.

Really? It’s just a small arrow beside the picture of the fuel pump on the gas gauge, it points one way or the other and that indicates what side the filler hole is on.

I didn’t know that.

I have a 97 Honda. I assumed it was on the driver’s side, and lo and behold, there it was and still is! ;-o

All snarkiness aside, I’m going to check it now.

My Civic’s dash doesn’t even have a pump symbol, but thankfully the refuel spout is still on the driver’s side. ;-o

@SQUEEKY2 We checked all that. Nothing to report.