[s-cars] 470 miles on one tank of gas!

[Taka Mizutani]

You probably have one of those super convoluted tanks that car manufacturers
like to use, which cause all sorts of problems.

My Mom's Beetle ran fine for years, then all of a sudden, started to read
high- stalled out rolling into a gas station with the low fuel light coming
on maybe 30 seconds earlier, then running out of gas about 1/4 mile from
home- very lucky on both counts. Tank sender replaced and now it reads
really low- drive 75 miles and it reads 1/2 tank. Can't get even halfway
decent linearity to the gauge, it's really annoying.

I know A6s have a triple-sender system that caused all sorts of problems, a
TSB or two and at least three different iterations of sender to try and fix
the issue- I think the real issue is that the tank is so convoluted that the
fuel pickup can't reliably pick up all the fuel in the tank. I would have
thought the much larger A8 wouldn't have as much an issue considering that
there is a lot more space to put a fuel tank in that car.

Be thankful that you have a 23 gallon tank! The Volvo only has something
like 15-16 useful gallons, then the car complains that it's low on gas and I
don't want to chance running out. I've gotten 19 gallons in there with the
fuel light on and the car saying 30 miles to empty, so it must be
about 19.5gallons. With the dismal mileage I get, I need a 30 gallon
tank. Still not
as bad as putting $100 of regular into the Suburban at work with the gas
gauge reading 1/4. :-O

I hear you on the getting low on gas and getting pulled over- I did that
recently, low on gas and distracted because I was trying to figure out where
to get gas, then crest a hill and get nailed by laser by NJSP. Not good at
all. That was about a $325 fill up. And Volvo wagons are supposed to be low
key! Red Miata gets ignored, but grey Volvo gets nailed? WTF?

Taka


On 8/23/07, pkrasusky at ups.com <pkrasusky at ups.com> wrote:
>
> Mebbe it's an Avant thang???  I *assure you* the sedan's tank is 19.5g.
>
> Alumibitch on the other hand is like 23.5 - and them last 4 gallons are
> slickytricky.  Like the time I ran out on my bday this winter.  Then got
> pulled over 0.5 milliseconds after filling up.  Happy bday to me...
>
> -Paul coasts to pumps K.
>