On 4 different occasions now my fuel gauge would show empty even though there is gas in the car. Happens when I start the car. If I drive a few miles and turn the car off and back on the fuel gauge shows the gas level in the tank.

When the gauge reads empty, the red lite glows. Anyone experience this, or have any idea on the cause? I suspect it has something to do with the thing-a-magigy in the tank.

 

you mean gas?

 

What?

 

LOL. Nevermind. Had that happen with a Celica in the 70's. They said it was a sticking float sensor. Don't know if it still works that way. Were you parked on an incline?

 

No, no incline. And yeah, that's what I meant, a float sensor.

 

In the owners' manual (of an R53), there's a note about a 2-gal. reserve in the tank...

The little red light comes on when I have about 2 gal. left BEFORE the reserve (usually about 65 mi or so) on the dist-til-empty on the trip comp.

Your gage will read empty, and you dist to empty will first read '0' then '-' and if you keep going, then the car will eventually run out of gas and stop (once you used up that reserve).
Your fuel pump will probably not like you for doing that though, as it probably uses the gas to cool itself.

I just put 13.7 gal of 93 octane in this AM, and I showed that I went 417mi, and still had 23 till 'empty'. (I have a 100 mi daily commute).
a calculator shows that I got 30.44mpg, and the trip comp. showed 30.5 (stop-n-go kills fuel eco, as I usually get 31-33).

Oh, and don't forget that if you 'top off' while refueling, you gas level is higher than the sensor, so you will go farther than it thinks you can...

Hope this helps.

 

Goaljnky,
That used to happen to me in my 02' MC. I would do the same thing as you and it would be fine. I never did anything about it b/c I was out of warranty and wasn't going to pay thousands (as I'm sure others think the same).

 

Sorry, it doesn't. Gauge reads empty when there is almost a full tank of gas. Please see OP.

I am still under warranty, so I think I might have the dealer give it a look.

 

I just had my fuel tank replaced (punctured by rubble on the road), and it took forever for the dealer to get everything right again. Supposedly (on R53's anyway), there are two sides to the fuel tank. There's a pump in the tank that keeps the level on the two sides about the same, and there's a level sensor in each side. The dashboard readout includes data from both. To get an incorrect zero reading, something must be wrong either with both sensors (unlikely) or in the wiring.

 

My wife's car (2006 MCSC) does the same thing (fuel gauge drops to "empty" even with a full tank of gas, but later recovers).

It only does it about 1-2 times a month, so we're just going to wait until the car's due for its next service and have the dealer look at it then. (there's plenty of warranty left).

 

I had an issue a few weeks ago when I disconnected the engine gound wire to raise the engine & change Supercharger pulley. Afterwards, I went for a test drive & my fuel gauge read emty, range showed only 40 miles but I had nearly a full tank.

The computer slowly recalculated over 30 minutes of driving, the gauge went back up & the range increased along with.

All this to suggest that possibly if the battery is getting weak, there could be less than 12 volts at times while sitting to keep the brain accurate. Put a volt meter on the battery after sitting over night & see what it reads.

 

My bad... esp. since I have the same issue...
fill the tank, and the gage reads 0.

I just got George back and had one (of two) bad fuel level sensor replaced...
They had to rip the entire back half of the car out to get to the sensor.

 

So is that the problem then? I've been having the same issue. It happened a couple times over the last few months so I didn't really worry about it, but now its happened 2 or 3 times in the last week. I'll probably wait until I go in for service in a couple months, but I just wanted to find out if goaljnky figured out if this was the problem on this issue.

 

My '05 MCa did the same thing a few times. Get in, crank up, head down the road, fuel gauge reads empty with red low fuel light on (tank full or nearly full). Turning the car off for a few minutes corrects mine, one time had to do it a couple of times. Took it to the dealer and they couldn't duplicate it, didn't have any idea what causes it. They said they reinstalled the software or something. Hasn't happened again so far. Ghost of Lucas again?!?

 

My mini started doing this last week. Same symptoms described, still under warranty. I've been too busy to take it into the dealership, but it's highly annoying.

 

Mine has done it twice in about 18 months. Unable to replicate, so tough to get it worked on. We'll see how it goes I guess. Warranty ran out on 7/20.

 

Could temperature have anything to do with it? It seems like it happens more frequently during the middle of a hot day than when the car is cool.

 

Happened to me today. Really weird. The thing is I had just filled up with gas the other day. And today, when I headed out, the gauge was all the way counterclockwise as it could be with the red light on, which caught my attention.

At first I thought someone had siphoned the gas out of the tank where I last parked it, but that seemed really far fetched, 'cuz I would have noticed the empty condition when I started up. I then thought that maybe my tank had suddenly sprung a leak and the gas had leaked out overnight, but that seemed even further far fetched, as I would have surely smelled gasoline around and in the car. So I figured the gauge on my '06 MC had gone whack. But just to make sure, I pulled in to a nearby gas station to fill up and it only took a gallon and a half to do so, and thus the gauge defect was confirmed. When I started up to pull away the gauge was fully pegged, as it had been the other day. Weird.

Anybody get any feedback from the dealer on what the problem is? My car is still under warranty and I would like to get it fixed while it still is. I wonder if there is a technical service bulletin out to repair or replace the defective fuel gauge.

 

My wife's car has done the same thing three or four times in the three years since we bought the car new. If it gets too bad, the fix is usually to replace the fuel level sender in the gas tank. It's not a simple matter of the fuel float sticking, since that would give false high readings rather than false low readings. Instead, the problem is either a short-circuit or an open circuit in the sender's variable resistor that drives the fuel gauge.

 

Have you taken it to the dealer to have the 'fuel level sender' replaced under warranty? Seems like a serious enough problem to have it taken care of while it's still under warranty.

 

I don't really like dealing with the service department at our local dealership, so the fewer times I take the car there, the better. If it got to the point where the fuel gauge stopped working completely, I'd do it, but it's happening so rarely and briefly that I'd probably just get the "could not duplicate" brush-off from the dealer.

There are two fuel level sensors in the car (left & right), and they're only $99 each, so if one of them dies completely after the warranty's expired, I'll just replace it myself.

 

I was wondering about the two fuel level sensors and according to the TIS(as well as previous posts)there is a fuel level sensor on each side of the tank.

 

Looking at realoem.com, it appears that the driver's side has the fuel pump and a fuel level sensor, and the passenger side has the fuel filter and another fuel level sensor.

 

Mine did this for a couple of days. That was months ago. It has been fine since. I think the fuel gauge software is from Microsoft.

 

The last time I had it in for service I mentioned it and they replaced at least one (maybe both?) fuel sensors under warranty. I had to keep the car there overnight but so far it fixed the problem. Just mention the problem and they should just go ahead and fix it for you.