Low Fuel Light - Respect it!
 

To help prevent anyone else from going through what I did this morning - my advice is : learn to respect the low fuel light. I had it come on many times during my approx 1200 mile trip last weekend. This morning I made it 47 miles from the point (273) it lit to running out of fuel. I was about .3 mile from the crest of a hill that led to the next gas station from which point I could have / did coast to the station (once I got it started). But with the mile run back home to get another car and a gas container, getting gas in it, back to the 8, adding fuel to the 8, driving back home, running the mile back to the car ( I was dressed for the gym already when I startedout), finding it still wouldn't start, waiting for my wife to bring the gas container, adding the rest of the gas, then finally driving to the station - I added about an hour to my morning commute. The station happened to be full service, one of few still around which I didn't know before this AM, but the gas pump stopped at about 14.1 - he added some to 14.23 - so if I added .9 from the container, it was still only adding 15.1 +/-. So I'm not sure if the tank was .8 short of full when I last filled it or if the car just can't use that last 3/4 gallon. If anyone else has a good way to find out, go for it. I'll limit myself to 40 miles from the time the light comes on from here out - which isn't much depending where you are (of course,some might say fill before the light comes on - which is not a bad idea for normal circumstances).

after the light came on, where you doing mostly local driving or highway driving?

Depending on your driving style too you could probably squeeze a little more out of the tank.

forgot to mention that. when the light came on I was on interstate 70 ; most of the drive home from that point is on interestate or highway - and I was doing mostly 75 and then 55 on the about 5 miles of rural highway - I hit one light in town and that's it. The cold start this morning probably ate a bit higher consumption rate. I only made it 1 mile from the cold start point.

i was always under the impression that for most, if not all cars, when the low fuel light comes on that indicates about 2 gallons of fuel left. so 47 miles after the light came on sounds about right.

that mathematically occurred to me as I was running back to the car this morning also. 48 would have been nice though! But... it was a good learning experience - at least it happened a mile from home and not in the middle of Deal's Gap with no shoulder and no gas station for 5 or 10 miles. Or worse.

My rule of thumb is, when the light come up, I tell myself, I only have 25 miles left to run and start to search for a Gas station nearby. Plus with the bad gas mileage, I wouldn't be too surprise if you can't squeez much out of the tank.

Theory: probably due to the funny layout of the gas tank, the last gallon in the tank might not be pickup properly.

In the past when I was running out of gas, I did what some race car drivers do when in the same situation: weave back and forth a little trying to get every drop of gas out of the tank.

Anyway, it saved me a couple times.

-Mr. Wigggles

That would be hilarious to watch...

At least you didn't run lean and detonate your apex seals :)

Try filling it up when you get to a quarter tank...
Impurities, be it water or dust, eventually gather at the bottom of your tank and when you run a tank low these impurities have a higher rate to enter the fuel stream; possibly clogging the fuel injection system and causing poorer performance in general. I'm not positive on this but running the tank empty might also cause oil deposit build up more quickly and from what I read on this forum is not a good thing. This is not a beater car, have some respect.

The fuel light means the tank is low, which means it needs to be filled, not run 47 more miles on.

A little common sense could have saved you an hour of your time, some embarrasment, and possible damage to your engine.

-JiM

Also, if the fuel pump is tank-mounted (like previous RX's), running it that low deprives the pump from it's cooling. I'm trying to get into the habit of filling at a quarter, because I'm tired of stressing about whether or not I have enough gas to get to work.

this is so true!!! plus you were going up hill too no?


a few gas tank actually shape like this (view from back)

------------------------
| |
| ______ |
|___/ \_____|

weaving left and right would get the fuel to the correct side!!




edit, i gave up, the acsii drawing does work, it has a "dune" in the bottom middle, so when weaving left and right, the fuel could get to the other side