Haha...yeah. Most of us probably keep that in the back of our mind. I know I am just play'n....not that I could hit 700 anyhow.

 

I have a friend that has a Ford wagon. He tried filling the tank to the brim a few times. His fuel gauge started reading empty after a fill up. He took it to two different Ford dealers over 4 months to get it fixed. After three visits, Ford finally replaced the sending unit and mentioned to fill the tank till the first auto shutoff. He followed their instructions and it's worked fine ever since.

I found I get more consistent mpg readings using the calculator by setting the nozzle to low and wait for it to shut off. Thats it, I put on the cap.

I multiplied out my 599 miles with 1/4 tank left. That would have taken me to that magic 800 mile range. I'm like many others and would rather keep plenty of gas in the tank.

 

How many gallons were put in after the pump first kicked off? Any gas pumped after the first or second cut off risks damaging parts of the fuel system.

-- Alan

 

With 19 gallons I would be looking under by car to see where that gas is going. If thats not a typo I would contact the state to come out and have that pumped checked for accuracy.

 

I have calculated from mpg and trip meter that after I fill up (to first click) and then drive until the fuel gauge drops to the "full" mark I use 1.5 gallons.

And I suppose that when right before the tank was overfilled to 19.2 gallons, it was not completely empty

So, altogether I infer:

From truly empty to the empty mark, approx 1.5 gallons
from empty mark to the empty light off, 1.0 gal
from empty light to full mark, 13.2 gal
from full mark to first click, 1.5 gal
from first click off to overfill to brim. 2.0 gal

Does anyone think that this is about right?

And, has everyone noticed that the fuel gauge is graduated in 16ths and that the major marks are not at the quarter points ? the marks are at 3/16 and 5/16 intervals.

And, has anyone noticed that the fuel gauge is quite nonlinear?

 

I don't know about your gallons comments, but I have never seen a fuel guage that IS linear.

 

Filling to the brim is bad, mm'kay? http://epa.gov/donttopoff/

Plus from my experience it doesn't seem to adjust your cruise range properly if you overfill. Mine wasn't going up until I stopped trying to fill way up--now I let the pump stop, start it again and after the second auto-stop I fill to the next happy little nickel (got that from someone else's way of doing it, and been content with it).

 

My experience is that the fuel gauge is actually fairly linear over the top 3/4 of the tank. If I remember correctly, I calculated that it's about 3.5 L (~0.9 galUS) per minor tick mark (16 steps from 'E' to 'F'). I usually fill up as follows: I ease off on the trigger when I get near to the volume I'm expecting to have to add to fill the tank (ScanGauge tells me how much gas it thinks I have used, and I use this to make the estimate). I let it click off the first time, allow maybe 15 seconds for the sloshing to subside, and then top it off until the second click off. This seems to give a fairly consistent fill, and the gauge then reads ~1.5 ticks (~5 L or 1.4 galUS) above 'F.' I think that going beyond this is likely to overfill the tank, and potentially get fuel into the vapor recovery system. These numbers are, I think, generally consistent with what Smilin' Jack is saying.

Stan

 

Page 398 of the owners manual says the fuel tank capacity is 17.2 gallons.

It is supposed to have a 3 gallon "reserve" when the gas-pump idiot light turns on. I am sure you are ignoring that... Even so, you can't extract much more than 17.2 gallons of fuel from a 17.2 gallon tank. There is just no way the metal gas tank can hold much more than 17.2 gallons of fuel, unless there is a serious manufacturing defect.

Measurement "errors" by gas pumps are very common, though. It is in the gas-station owners interest to claim a higher number of gallons, because it allows him/her to charge you more money for the same actual amount of gas. Most states allows one percent error in the measurement. A one-percent error would allow at most 17.37 gallons in a TCH tank. An error of more than ten percent is either a seriously defective pump, or evidence of plain old-fashioned fraud.

You should contact the weights-and-measures department of your state government, and ask them to check out that filling station.

BTW -- There was a thread here a couple months ago in which I reported that I thought the gas station I had been using was mis-measuring. Turns out, they were. I found out when I went there one day and half the pumps were disabled with state seals and new locks. A few weeks after that, the entire station closed for "renovation". In the last few weeks, they have dug up all of the tanks and plumbing, carted it away, replaced the underground systems, poured new concrete, and installed new pumps. (That seems amazingly fast for such construction, but they really did that all in just a few weeks.) I don't know if that "renovation" actually has anything to do with the state closing some of the pumps... It's just a hell of a coincidence.

I expect the new pumps are designed so that the state cannot detect the over-measurement fraud again.

 

The tank capacity is 17.2 gallons. The other 2 gallons probably filled the filler tube and the charcoal canister.

To get 700 miles you need a 45 MPG (indicated) tank average. Everyone's display reads about 1.2 MPG high. That gives a real average of 43.8 MPG which takes 16 gallons. You will still have a gallon to a gallon and a half of reserve.

And yes, the needle will be under the "E". And the idiotic idiot light will have come on about a hundred miles before!