Fuel Gauge Accuracy

[rr11]

As Shadows Papa said its a long narrow tank, angle will play a lot in fuel around the pump/ fuel level sensor. Years ago I had a New Holland tractor, had the pickup on the right side of the tank. Ran it out of fuel with a quarter tank cutting around a hill. My Gladiator fuel gage is fairly accurate however living in Florida I spend limited time on steep grades.

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[48to49]

So, just speculating here, could the “extra” hidden gallons of remaining gas be there to keep the fuel pump cool? Just spit balling here but I know in some tanks the fuel pump is on the inside of the tank and the gas sloshing around the pump is there to keep it from overheating. Did the engineering department plan ahead and put that pump on the bottom because they know so many of us run these things close to dry?

Op, for all this anxiety and trouble, did you at least snap some shots of the northern lights to show us?

Yep, Lady A put on quite a show.

Tried getting a little Jeep porn, but getting an image of a black vehicle at 0300 was a challenge. Way overexposed, but it's still there.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

As Shadows Papa said its a long narrow tank, angle will play a lot in fuel around the pump/ fuel level sensor. Years ago I had a New Holland tractor, had the pickup on the right side of the tank. Ran it out of fuel with a quarter tank cutting around a hill. My Gladiator fuel gage is fairly accurate however living in Florida I spend limited time on steep grades.

I can't prove it and this could be pure speculation as well - but I wonder if this is not really a direct, live reading - unlike the fuel gauge systems in older cars and trucks where the gauge was a 5 volt volt meter and the tank had a sending unit with a float connected to a rheostat - and as the flow moved up and down it varied the resistance in the ground side of that gauge and it was love - SO live that if the dampening circuit was bad in the gauge, the needle would bounce up and down on the gauge as you drove and cornered and hit the brakes.
How do I know there's a dampening circuit in the fuel gauge in older cars?
I had the cluster from my SX4 apart putting on a NOS "lens" - I already had a good set of gauges - the fuel gauge was basically new, but I found a batch of NOS gauges- new temperature, new fuel gauges. I installed them and the first time out of the shop with it, the fuel gauge needle bounced up and down with the fuel sloshing. Dang, should have left that other new gauge in there but now, I had to have one with a whole year's less wear!

I'm wondering if these don't take it a bit farther and take a reading "every so often" instead of live - meaning if you nose down for a while, it might take a bit for the gauge to recover once level.
Mine is really quite accurate as far as the gauge - when it's on empty, you only use the "range" as a bit more information. I don't have 4 more gallons when mine is on empty.
The range will definitely vary a lot - if I've been getting really good mpg in recent miles and my last trip, it starts with that estimate, and then it updates, sometimes UP, yeah, I can actually watch my range go from say 63 up to 65, or maybe stay at 63 for 2 or 3 miles depending on how I am driving at the time. If I smack-drive it, or drive to where the mpg plummets, I can watch that range drop 5 for every mile driven. Then if I park and start again - it changes again.
It's basically making judgement calls based on information given it.

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