Phillip, I'll probably be judged a pi$$ poor pilot with my hair on fire but in the Bonanza, I routinely ran the aft tank dry
+++++++++++++++++++ After reading the AvWeb article years ago, I took to doing exactly this on my PA32. This airplane (single) has 84 gal spread over 4 tanks - so without some care a situation often arises where you have 2 hours of fuel on board, but it is spread out between 4 tanks - all showing something near to "Empty". Fuel is often not available at a destination where you expected to top up the tanks, so you have to push on to the next stop. Nothing worse than being 10 minutes from landing, knowing that you have 60+ minutes of fuel - but what you can see is 4 tanks all on E. I took to running the tip tanks dry if more than two of the tanks were under 1/4 - that way I could be confident about what was remaining, plus I knew exactly which tank to select if there was a sudden surprise. HOWEVER - this is all fine with motors that will happily windmill all day (even at approach speeds) giving the driver plenty of time to change tanks and fire up all the pumps and fiddle with things until the motor is happy with the mixture and starts making nice noises. VW (and Vairs I suspect) do not readily windmill - they will stop dead if there is a fuel interruption for more than a split second. Let the experts speak - but my humble view is to avoid any fuel interruption on a High(er) compression engine. Higher RPM means smaller a prop (less leverage) will not help matters - neither will a re-drive. Steve J
