Fuel Tank Capacity - Low Fuel Light

[Proximo]

And that is why I love this place, keeps me from harming myself from ignorance

Exactly, wife sez "why are you always looking at that crap, you got your JT". I respond with "I'm learning"

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[PyrPatriot]

It is funny, I never tried this stuff with my Element. I read that the light goes on at 3gal and no matter how I drove I always got 20mpg, so I could get those 60mi from the tank after low status and never ran out of gas. The JT with it’s fancy monitoring, well now I wonder “do I really have that in the tank or is there a margin of error built in?”

 

[wannajeep]

The JT with it’s fancy monitoring, well now I wonder “do I really have that in the tank or is there a margin of error built in?”

Only one way to find out :D

 

[PyrPatriot]

Only one way to find out :D

I got as close as I wanted to! What concerns me is the fact that it went from low fuel light to “Low mi”, skipping what should have been at least 40-60mi of trip down to under 15mi range remaining in a span of 10mi

 

[PyrPatriot]

Update 11/23/19
I had the opportunity to try and run the tank low and get a good estimate of mpgs. I left Louisville to Cincinnati with 111 miles on the tank left. The trip is 90 miles but because of a wrong turn it ended up being 100. At my destination the trip estimator said 23mi left in the tank. This was weird because the fuel pump light didnt go on, which it does when there are 2gal left in the tank. I was getting about 18mpg so at 23mi left I should only have had a little over a gallon of gas left. I decide to drive 13mi to the nearest Costco, as that is the gas I last filled up the tank with. About a mile from the pump my miles remaining drops from 20 (keep in mind it had showed 23mi remaining for 8 miles) to “Low”, which happens when there is 15mi left before empty. I had driven 408.4 miles, the Range was "Low mi" (meaning under 15mi left), and Of course this happens right as I get stuck in stop-and-go traffic at the end of a line to the last stop light. At the station I refill 20.75 gallons. It originally stopped filling at 20 even but by waiting about 15 seconds and starting again until automatic shutoff I got another quarter gallon in. No overflow. I then proceed to park about 100ft away and go get some food. I give it a good half hour before I am back to my car in the cold rain. I go to see if it will take anymore gas and another 1/4gal goes in. Looks like that “wait a 30 seconds and fill, repeat” trick doesnt work like some have said does on the JK.

So, we have an even 21 gallons. Right where it should have been. Looks like everything is in order. I reset trip/mpg stats and make it home. Mpg was just over 22 pure highway driving at or just below speed limit (lots of steep hills). Combined miles driven and miles remaining put me at 450 miles, which at 21gal x 22mpg gives 462, close enough

Results from 11/23/19
I made the same trip and filled up at the same Costco gas station ($1.99/gal !!!). I filled up with 42mi remaining on the Range estimator. The low fuel light did not come on (as it is supposed to when you reach 2gal remaining). I had at this point averaged 18.6mpg since the last fillup (22pmg on highway but once I got back to city driving I dropped to 18mpg even with short highway spurts). I should have had 2.3gal remaining, so maybe the light shouldn't have come on. I ended up filling 18.05gal.

I had previously filled up 21 gallons (I know it says 20.75 but looking at reciepts it ended up being 21). After fillup my Range read 372mi with a full tank and 18.4mpg. About 90 miles later the remaining Range was 356 (at 21.4mpg) totaling 446 mi on the tank. At fillup my Trip read 351.8mi, with 42mi remaining. I filled 18.05gal and now the Range was 379 with 18.6mpg. That would mean the tank was 20.4 gal full, about 1.5gal shy of it's capacity.

 

[wannajeep]

I made the same trip and filled up at the same Costco gas station ($1.99/gal !!!)

I might have to drive form Maine to Cincinnati just to fill up at $1.99/gal

 

[Gatorized]

I might have to drive form Maine to Cincinnati just to fill up at $1.99/gal

You can get the same deal at BJs if you buy the right combination of products.

 

[wannajeep]

Just fill it until it auto shuts off, and carry a 1 or 2 gal jerry jug in the bed (set inside a milk crate to keep it from tipping over). Venting the cap once a day wouldn't be a bad idea if temperatures vary.

 

[PyrPatriot]

Just fill it until it auto shuts off, and carry a 1 or 2 gal jerry jug in the bed (set inside a milk crate to keep it from tipping over). Venting the cap once a day wouldn't be a bad idea if temperatures vary.

Steel jerry cans with a

Just fill it until it auto shuts off, and carry a 1 or 2 gal jerry jug in the bed (set inside a milk crate to keep it from tipping over). Venting the cap once a day wouldn't be a bad idea if temperatures vary.

I have found the metal Jerry cans and some 3M screw on caps work amazing. No fumes, no leaking. I tested it out fairly thoroughly and I would be comfortable keeping the can inside an SUV on a hot summer day (which was one of the tests, no smell of gas!). Yes I know the risks of driving around with a can of gas for long periods of time. No need to warn against them.

I had the chance to drive another good trip today. This time to Nashville, TN. 190mi each way. Fuel economy going down was terrible, went from 24mpg on flats to 17.5mpg by the time I got to Nashville. All highway. The Jeep struggled getting to and staying at 70-80mph. Now on the return trip it was quite the opposite. By that time I had switched from alloy wheels with Dueller A/t to steel wheels with Dueler H/T. Maybe that was it? I noticed sometimes the Gladiator really wants to get up and go. The return trip was so good on mpgs that it raised the trip average from 17.5 to 20, doing 70mph easy (and 80 when called for).

I started my trip to Nashville with an average of 19.3mpg, from a 163mi Trip, filling up 9.00gal. 163/19.3=8.445gal burned since last fillup. Reset was done after a couple miles of driving. So now we have an extra 1/2 gal? Range estimated to be 390mi. Return trip was, as stated earlier, great. Something on I65 was messed up because traffic was backed up about 20-30mi and GPS said it would add 2hr to my trip to take it, so I took some back roads. As I was getting closer to home I saw that the Range was 35mi remaining at 19.4mpg. The light is set to come on at 2gal remaining, so at 19.4mpg 2gal would have a range of 38.8mi. Clearly at 35mi remaining the light should have been on. It did not come on until Range was 29mi. When the Range was just a bit past 10mi remaining the estimate changed to "Low", as expected. By this time I had driven 369.1mi and at 369.3mi I was filling up. Good timing. Pumping the gas slow, I got 19.446gal before automatic shutoff. Now, in theory I should have had 0.5gal in my tank, so I should have filled up 21.5gal of my 22gal tank, at least 21gal. But I am again, as always, 2gal short of a full tank. The tank should actually be able to hold MORE than 22gal. My other cars when I ran them to the point of having about 1/2 gal left in the tank, they took about 1/2gal more than their OEM listed capacities. My Honda Element has a 14.9gal tank but took 16.7gal once!

 

[MrJeep]

Sorry to resurrect this but I'm finding that I can run it to damn near "empty" and only put it 18.5 gals in as well. I'm a tester so I will probably drive my wife nuts and go 30 miles past empty and see what happens.
I do notice the gauge when the tank is low is very affected by even the smallest angles front to back. Probably because it is long and narrow. Might just be something we just know and live with but it is annoying that 16% of the capacity is unusable.

 

[PyrPatriot]

Thank you!

 

[MarineHawk]

Sorry to resurrect this but I'm finding that I can run it to damn near "empty" and only put it 18.5 gals in as well. I'm a tester so I will probably drive my wife nuts and go 30 miles past empty and see what happens.
I do notice the gauge when the tank is low is very affected by even the smallest angles front to back. Probably because it is long and narrow. Might just be something we just know and live with but it is annoying that 16% of the capacity is unusable.

I get the impression that the Range feature, as with other vehicles, tells you the max of how much further it thinks you should go before you should filling up the tank again, not how many miles you actually can go before the tank completely runs dry. Until someone completely runs their tank dry, we will never know. Any volunteers?

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Sorry to resurrect this but I'm finding that I can run it to damn near "empty" and only put it 18.5 gals in as well. I'm a tester so I will probably drive my wife nuts and go 30 miles past empty and see what happens.
I do notice the gauge when the tank is low is very affected by even the smallest angles front to back. Probably because it is long and narrow. Might just be something we just know and live with but it is annoying that 16% of the capacity is unusable.

That is exactly what I see. Mine will say I have 35 miles left, and i'm running an average of 20 mpg, that means - if it goes by my average, I'd have under 2 gallons left. If it's using current mpg, it would mean a little more.
I can never get more than about 18.5 gallons in.
I don't even get a low fuel warning.
The last three times I thought ok I could put 20 in it, nope, it shut off between 18 and 19 and I couldn't eve squeeze over 19 in by standing there 5 minutes tweaking the pump.

I concentrate on the goal of 20 because we get emails giving us good money off each gallon up to 20 gallons and a grocery store chain gives us "fuel saver" points on certain things - there's times we get over a buck a gallon OFF - up to 20 gallons. Ya think I want to stop at 18 gallons and give them two bucks back? LOL

I guess the thing has to say you are out of fuel, 0 miles left, before you can squeeze 20 gallons into a 22 gallon tank.

 

[MrJeep]

I get the impression that the Range feature, as with other vehicles, tells you the max of how much further it thinks you should go before you should filling up the tank again, not how many miles you actually can go before the tank completely runs dry. Until someone completely runs their tank dry, we will never know. Any volunteers?

When it gets warmer I have no problem throwing a gerry can in the back and driving 30 miles past "0 miles to empty" to see what happens. It's so new I'm not going to "suck up junk" floating on the top of the gas at this point, which is what the internet would have you believe happens. My wife has run our LR4 out of gas no less than 3 times and I had to come with a can. No effect on the fuel pump, etc.

 

[MarineHawk]

When it gets warmer I have no problem throwing a gerry can in the back and driving 30 miles past "0 miles to empty" to see what happens. It's so new I'm not going to "suck up junk" floating on the top of the gas at this point, which is what the internet would have you believe happens. My wife has run our LR4 out of gas no less than 3 times and I had to come with a can. No effect on the fuel pump, etc.

Cool. I wish the tripometers would show how many gallons we have used since rezeroing them in additional to the other things. Some of my previous vehicles did that. I could zero after filing up, and assuming the tank-capacity spec was correct, know how much I had remaining.

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