> I read an article a while ago in Car & Driver that explained that fuel
> gauges are built intentionally inaccurate. In a modern American car,
> the gauge will read full until the tank is a few gallons low. The gauge
> will read empty when there are a few gallons left in the tank.
>
<<SNIP>>
> >>> Douglas Gaither <gaither@ix.netcom.com> 01/12/98 03:41pm >>>
Douglas,
I'm not positive, but I thought that there was actually a fixed
number of gallons that HAD to be in the tank when the needle read
"empty", courtesy of Ralph Nader, et al. It was really a pain in the
ass on my old Prelude (~12 gallon tank), because I think mine had
something like 2.5 gallons left when it read empty, which was a
quarter-tank. I wish that they would just make the gauge accurate,
and leave the risk-taking to us.
On a related topic, I think there may be some inherent inaccuracy in
gas gauges. My brother's BMW had the 1/4-tank marks spaced unevenly
along the face of the gauge, but they were accurate. Perhaps this
was to compensate for problems with the gauge?
Scott
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