I'd been noticing that the fuel gauge on my fit was non linear. For the first quarter tank I can put 100 miles on the car consistently. With this in mind you would think I could get 400 miles out of this car on one tank full.

Wrong.

I average 280 miles per tank full. That's me waiting for the 'idiot' light to light up. Over the last 3 fill ups, I've come up with this chart that shows how many miles I get out of this car at 1/4 tank, 1/2 tank, 3/4 tank and that last 1/4 tank...

Here what I came up with.

I'd never noticed that in any other car, and found it a little interesting, it must be the position of the float, I guess?

 

I noticed the same in my 96 Civic EX 2 door coupe. Must be a honda thing as I have had a 82 Prelude and 91 Civic Hatchback with the same results.

 

I have the exact same problem, should we bring that to Honda's attention?

 

Normal to most cars. I have a 05 Mazda3 and its the same with the fuel guage. first 1/2 tank is real slow to go down than last 1/2 is like theres a hole in the gas tank. My WRX and Jeep Liberty did the same thing as well....

 

My Fit and Civic both do the same thing.

 

Mine does the same thing. It's annoying. I get great gas mileage the first half a tank, and crappy mileage for the second. At least I know it's normal, now.

 

Every Honda/Acura, and possibly all cars do this. The gas tank is not consistently shaped throughout.

 

Every single car I've driven is like this. I never reply on the fuel gauge, it's only a suggestion at best.

 

You can't calculate it by the gauge, you have to do the math with gallons filled to miles driven.

 

292 miles out of a tank is pretty good! NOt bad it's definately over 30 mpg!

 

Actually, @ 292 if you fill up your tank with say 9.5 gallons you get 30.7mpg. Usually my idiot (fuel) light hits around 285 to 290 miles, and I fill it up with 9.2 gallons = 31.5 mpg.

The Fuel gauge is another matter all together. I don't use the fuel gauge to estimate fuel efficiency, but was suprised at how "non-linear" it was. I've mostly owned GM cars, my first Honda, my wife owned a 94 civic when we met. Most of my cars' fuel gauges were pretty darn close to linear. Just found it odd, but as long as I can drive close to 300 miles on 10 gallons of fuel I'll be ok.

 

All fuel gauges are deceiving. Reportedly, they are designed to make you feel like you're getting good economy right after filling up.

I wish Honda was above this but apparently they are not.

 

all of you reporting inconsistent gauges, are you over-filling your tanks?
I stop filling the first time the pump shuts off.
My mileage is pretty consistent

 

That makes no sense whatsoever. It is done from a design standpoint, period. The fuel tank is larger at the top than it is a the bottom from a "packaging" point of view, so naturally it fuel level will drop slower at first.

Car companies do not do this to somehow "fool" people that they are getting good MPG right after fillup, what benefit would they have from that anyway?

 

I had to laugh on my second tank when I finally found out at what point the light comes on. It comes on (orange) when there are 2 gallons (UK) left. That's around 90 miles of driving! I wonder if the light goes red a bit later on?

 

Read this article. It answers most of the questions in this thread.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-gauge.htm

 

First of all, I'll apoligize, as my camera phone isn't very good quality.

Getting low on gas, need to put some in:



So, I fill it up - topping it off with 12.5 gallons:



Now it is all filled up and the trip meter is reset:



It finally drops down below F:



Now it is down to 1/2 tank:



Down to 1/4 tank - nice trip mileage on this one :



Fuel light finally comes on:





Stop to get some gas:



Only less than 12.2 gallons this time:



Filled back up again:

 

As clearly stated in my message I am relaying what I have been told in the past. I have done no research into this myself and I am not saying what companies should or should not do.

On the other hand, if it is just caused by the shape of the tank, why couldn't they report the volume accurately? It's not like modern cars don't have any data processing capacity. In fact it could be done with a single table mapping probe levels to fuel volume; no math required.

 

wy133, any insight on how you are able to fit 12+ gallons into our ~10 gallon tanks?

 

u can squeeze in more even after the pump stops, i had a taurus before the fit which supposedly had a 16 gal tank, if i fill up when the light comes on, I can easily put in 3-4+ or gallons in the tank with patience, i used to fill it up to the cap totalling around 19 gal.... but i heard its not good for the car so since i got my fit i stopped doing that