. You have leverage due to the amount 
Well the drop off went fine, the ML tows nice with the extra power and cruise control, electrics all sorting themselves out so no fog lights on the car etc. I still think the Defender was slightly more stable though as it was like a rock.
The problem came when coming home and particularly where the M42 and M5 cross by Bromsgrove. Now it averaged 19mpg which isn’t terrible and I don’t want to fill up on the motorway so I check my range and it says 86 miles. Roughly 20 minutes later I check again and it’s at 64. A huge lorry was throwing up tons of spray as it was hammering down so I accelerate up to 75 to get past and then knock it back into cruise again. It’s like I’ve switched the engine off. No power, no stuttering nothing.
So I hit the hazards and move over across the M5 and M42 where they merge and manage to get on the hard shoulder before I’m going too slowly.
It wouldn’t start at all, spinning up fine but not a twitch from the engine. I check the battery connections, let it cool incase it’s a crank sensor getting hot and dying, disconnect the MAF ( (c) Beany ) and then look at the relays and fuses. Nothing un-toward so call the RAC.
The RAC man comes out, checks for fuel pressure, substitutes the fuel pump relay for a spare, plugs in his widget to check the crank signal and notices the fuel level is showing 0 on his meter. He cycles the ignition a few times, I’ve already done this about 20 times trying to get it to start, when the fuel gauge needle drops to zero and the low fuel light comes on
I then work out my range from roughly what I had in the tank when I started and my average mpg and I should have run out 10 miles earlier, fucking clever fuel gauges. My mileage has a historical readout since the last main reset, a trip readout which resets when the engine cools down between starts. So I go by the gauge. I think I’ll be resetting the main trip from now on till I figure out what is happening
The annoying part is though, roughly 6 years ago on that exact stretch of road I was driving my 500e when my low fuel light hadn’t come on and my gauge was stuck at 1/4 of a tank as it hadn’t been used and had stuck. I broke down about 1 mike further up that exact section of road, driving another Mercedes V8 coming back from the exact same place
When I pick the car up I think I’ll go a different route home.
On the way back stopping for a bit of food we saw this, would have been quite cool to have seen it on the way up
and park next to it. 
In conclusion, some twat ran out of fuel in the same spot coming from the same location in the same kind of cars twice in 6 years.
Dave!
