Ran Out of Fuel, Twice! With 1/4 tank showing on gauge

[‘21OBX]

In the "modern" age of credit/debit cards, gas stations are never closed. I cant take any of your statements seriously at this point. I respect your opinion I guess but just no sound logic in my opinion.

Yours still seems to have a problem as you should be able to trust the gas guage on a modern vehicle. Hopefully they get you sorted out.
Lol come on up it’s a entirely different world and the majority are most definitely closed in the evening sure in the bigger city’s munising and Marquette and right near the bridge you’ll find places open. But keep running low and running out of fuel. I for one do not want the inconvenience of running out when there’s no reason for it. So I’ll keep my tank topped up as long as I am able to do so.

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[BottleShark]

I tested mine today.

 

[tourproto]

And you don't tell us how much gas filled/was left??????????????????????????

Sorry, didn't even think about that.

My fill up was 21.46 gallons. Which is obviously more than the listed size of the tank (20.8 gal). So I guess I was into the "unstated reserve" capacity of the gas tank.

 

[Headsong]

Sorry, didn't even think about that.

My fill up was 21.46 gallons. Which is obviously more than the listed size of the tank (20.8 gal). So I guess I was into the "unstated reserve" capacity of the gas tank.

Whoa! Pushed too far, then....fumes....lucky you made it. Or the station pump needs recalibrating...lol.

 

[BigMeatsBronco]

I can't believe some people haven't driven for 10+ miles with "0 miles remaining" multiple times.

I did this exact thing. Shows 0 miles and the next fuel station was nearly 10 miles away. I made it w/o a sputter.
I'm thinking mine is calibrated wrong.

 

[Razorbak86]

I did this exact thing. Shows 0 miles and the next fuel station was nearly 10 miles away. I made it w/o a sputter.
I'm thinking mine is calibrated wrong.

It’s probably calibrated correctly, and you were simply driving on the empty reserve for the last few miles.

 

[BroncocnorB]

I’m just afraid of Zombies. So I try to keep the tank full so I can escape. Other than that if the price of fuel is going down, I run the tank low. If going up, fill ‘er up at half.

 

[Techun]

I did this exact thing. Shows 0 miles and the next fuel station was nearly 10 miles away. I made it w/o a sputter.
I'm thinking mine is calibrated wrong.

No, all cars give you a little extra. Zero isn't zero.

 

[hajj.david]

I've gone down to 5 miles left. This has me rethinking it.

Ive done 0 miles for a few miles a few times. Definitely got me thinking lol

 

[tourproto]

Whoa! Pushed too far, then....fumes....lucky you made it. Or the station pump needs recalibrating...lol.

what I don’t know is what is the excess unstated size of the tank. My other car is an E46 BMW with a 15.7gal tank and I have filled it up to 16.5gal multiple times.

I am sure there is more than 20.8 capacity, I just don’t know how much. But at least this was a good test for how “far” I can go relative to the “miles to empty” information.

 

[Headsong]

I was at 40 to go and filled 18.9. Seems pretty close.

 

[vzqhsg]

I have not really been someone who posts. And I haven’t really been on the page since I got my BB 2dr in March. But I wanted to share this in case someone else has this issue or in case someone has an answer. I was rolling away from a stop and the truck sputtered and died, would not restart. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAIN DRAG THROUGH TOWN, JUST UNDER AND OVERPASS FOR I-40

(Waited 3 hours for a tow, thanks USAA) got it to the dealer the next day. Took them a week to tell me the problem was the fuel level sender and the truck basically ran out of gas, didn’t even have enough to prime the system once the new one was in. (And they charged me for the fuel they had to put it in even though it was warranty work)

Here’s the frustrating part: it said 60 miles to “E” and no fuel light came on. With the truck calculating ~20MPG, that should have meant about 2.5 gallons, but they said it was less than 0.25 gallons.

2 weeks goes by, AND IT HAPPENS AGAIN! BUT AGAIN, NO FUEL LIGHT, 60 MILES TO “E” AND JUST DIED. This time, I’m on a 3-lane interstate stuck in dead stop traffic. I limp it to the shoulder and call the dealer who supposedly just fixed it and unloaded on them, swearing up a storm cause I was LIVID. They tried to give me some crap about how the system has an allowable amount of error in calculating and that the fuel pick up is in the center of the tank and blah, blah, blah. Will not be taking it back there.
But this time, a buddy of mine who is a state police officer (working the accident causing the traffic) drove me to the fuel station 1.5 miles down the road where I was able to get a fuel container and fill up the truck with about 2.5 gallons with no change to the fuel gauge. Made it back to that same station, filled the tank and finally made it to work.

So at this point, I have figured out the fuel gauge cannot be trusted and I’ll have a full fuel container in the back at all times, just in case. And today, I took it to another dealer to see if they could recalibrate it, but the told me they’d have to diagnose it first. I’m hoping they can, but they were not able to get to it for a week.

I am very seriously considering trading it in, this is major BS.


If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading my rant. Maybe it will help someone. Probably not.

Or when you get to 70 miles to E it's time to put more gas in it. Why carry a container? Did you check the fuse and elec. connections?

 

[NotApplicable]

Another valid and easy solution is to keep more gas in the tank…

I never run the tank that low if it’s avoidable (as it sounds like it is in these scenarios: around town, not out in the middle of nowhere)

 

[gnitnuj]

I may have a similar issue, I am at 7k miles on the 2.3L and this Saturday for the first time ever, my gas gauge is probably wrong. I left to my friend's place with 80-90 miles left on the tank and its maybe 7 miles away, but then when I left his place, I had 140 miles on the tank, and I know for a fact that I won't make it 140 miles. To add some additional color, I know that the MTE is always recalculating, but I've never seen it jump 50 or so miles, and definitely beyond what the vehicle will be able to make. In fact, not only did the my MTE increase by 50, but my tank went up from 1/4 to 1/2.

 

[Stefanmcd]

I have a possibly related, but weirder problem. I was at 1/4 tank when I parked with maybe 100 MTE. Following day I left and noticed the gauge read about 1/8 and had 60 MTE. It started dropping at an extremely alarming rate, maybe a mile for every 100 yards or so. I thought maybe a fuel line came loose or a punctured tank. I dropped to 0 and was about 2 miles from the gas station. Ran all the way to the gas station no issues and the tank took just over 15 gallons to fill it up which would be the expected 3/4 tank. The gauge (and MTE) never moved. I've been on empty/zero for a day and about 40 miles. I'm guessing a bad sensor?

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