Out of Gas?

[greenblinker]

Well the 1rst time i ran out of gas i felt like an idiot. That was last week, and i just did it again yesterday. Heres a quick prior history... I have an 04 xls 2wd ex. w/ approx 45k on it. I've had problems in the past with the fuel gage not registering after a fill up. Now back to running out of gas, usually I can run it with the gas light on for a few miles.. when i ran out of gas the light never came on and the gage showed me as having just less than an 1/8 of a tank. The second time i was pretty close to having a 1/4 tank of gas. Today when i was driving home i had a 3rd of a tank and the revs began dieing like its going to run out of gas again. luckily i got home before it died, but now I'm confused and scared to go anywhere.



Thanks
Nick

 

[crash594]

I gave up trying to fix guages. Go by the miles. An average car is designed to get atleast 300 miles per tank thensee how much fuel goes in and adjust from there.
If its not your float then good luck.

 

[greenblinker]

Thanks for the quick response, i'll top it off tommorow and start from there

 

[crash594]

Some one else may key in with a simple place to check but the fuel level system takes time. Usually you have to drop the tank. They are never easy.

 

[High_Order1]

There is an excellent thread already that talks about fuel gauge response times, so I am not going to reinvent the wheel here.

Basically, turn the car off and put at least four gallons in when you fill up. Anything less, or with the car on, can take a long long time to register. (search for slosh mode for more).

The newest cars need (I THINK) 11 minutes of continuous key on time to recalibrate, so you might consider taking yours to do the 100 buck / latest flash trip to the dealer to get the latest settings.

Don't run your car with just an 1/8 of a tank in it anyway. Yes, there are a lot of people that do it. Yes, there are a lot of people that run out of gas, too.

There's also the added thought that when the tank is very low, the sediment that forms on the bottom becomes stirred up. Even though there is a sock on the pickup, and an inline filter, some of the sub-micron crap could potentially get by and ruin your injectors. At the least, it could plug the filter or clog the sock, screwing with flow and pressure causing a lot of other gremlin-like problems.

So, to recap:

Yes, it is expensive to keep a car at the 1/4 tank mark.

BUT

It's nice knowing if something pops up, you have that much more wiggle room to find a gas station

AND

You don't have to worry about the other stuff so much.


Dropping the tank on an explorer doesn't appear to be so bad. Its' a plastic tank under the butt of the front passenger and feet of the rear one. The front of the tank has a metal shield on it to protect it from the exhaust pipe, and that's where your main fuel filter is (there are threads on that, too).

But, I can't see why you'd need to mess with the tank. That light is a warning indicator, not a cue to refill. Ideally, you shouldn't ever see it.

Good luck,

-Shawn

 

[greenblinker]

There is an excellent thread already that talks about fuel gauge response times, so I am not going to reinvent the wheel here.

Basically, turn the car off and put at least four gallons in when you fill up. Anything less, or with the car on, can take a long long time to register. (search for slosh mode for more).

The newest cars need (I THINK) 11 minutes of continuous key on time to recalibrate, so you might consider taking yours to do the 100 buck / latest flash trip to the dealer to get the latest settings.

Don't run your car with just an 1/8 of a tank in it anyway. Yes, there are a lot of people that do it. Yes, there are a lot of people that run out of gas, too.

There's also the added thought that when the tank is very low, the sediment that forms on the bottom becomes stirred up. Even though there is a sock on the pickup, and an inline filter, some of the sub-micron crap could potentially get by and ruin your injectors. At the least, it could plug the filter or clog the sock, screwing with flow and pressure causing a lot of other gremlin-like problems.

So, to recap:

Yes, it is expensive to keep a car at the 1/4 tank mark.

BUT

It's nice knowing if something pops up, you have that much more wiggle room to find a gas station

AND

You don't have to worry about the other stuff so much.


Dropping the tank on an explorer doesn't appear to be so bad. Its' a plastic tank under the butt of the front passenger and feet of the rear one. The front of the tank has a metal shield on it to protect it from the exhaust pipe, and that's where your main fuel filter is (there are threads on that, too).

But, I can't see why you'd need to mess with the tank. That light is a warning indicator, not a cue to refill. Ideally, you shouldn't ever see it.

Good luck,

-Shawn

I've learned my lesson as far as keeping the tank past a quarter tank. however my problem right now is the fact that its near a 1/3 and the engine is shuddering as if its running out of gas again. Your comment on the sediment seems to make a lot of sense. I'm heading out momentarily to top off the tank to see how many gallons i can put in. I guess i'll know instantly if the gauge has failed if i can put 20 gallons in.

 

[E.B. Cornburner]

You guys will like this one. I about ran mine out of fuel Monday night. Here's why...
My "Distance To Empty" feature doesn't base the miles to empty on the current tank, but rather on a running average of the last 500 miles driven. Well, since the previous 500 or so miles were almost all highway, the average MPG went up considerably. Back to work Monday and I'm again driving more city miles, and also driving it like it's the last day before I have to turn it in as a rental! In other words, my typical driving style of flogging the snot out of it.
I had roughly 1/8 of a tank left Monday night when I got done with work, and I immediately had to go to a meeting about 15 miles from work, so I figured I'll fill up on the way home, since I had to drive past the E85 station to go home anyways. Getting fuel first would have put me about 10 miles out of the way.
Leaving my meeting, I'm again driving like I'm being chased by gunmen, and I round one curve, and "brrrrpppp........." Nothing happened when I hit the throttle! I let it coast, and noticed it was still running, so I hit the throttle again, and it woke up and took off again. Meanwhile my DTE display said I had 27 miles till empty! So I then babied it the last 3 or 4 miles to the E85 station, and filled up. Only once more did it hiccup when I hit the throttle, but I was close enough at this point that I could have coasted in.

According to Ford, the Gen III Explorer has a 22.5 gallon fuel tank, and I proceeded to dispense 23.7 gallons into it! Now that's empty with a capital "E"! I saved that fuel receipt for a souvenir.

Usually, there's at least a gallon or so left in the tank when the DTE reads 0 miles to empty.

So, my point is...Don't always trust the DTE feature if your Explorer has it.

 

[greenblinker]

Nice one Cornburner lol. just an update here i filled up the other night and managed around 17 gallons when my gauge said i was around a 1/4 tank which seems right. However its been 87 miles and i'm still on the F for full?

 

[BWilliams]

That might be alright, greenblinker. There is some space at the top of the tank above the max float level, so you are probably still at that point -- I know that I can be when I fill the tank already, for quite a while.

I tend to keep the tank above 1/4 just so that I don't have to make a mad dash for a gas station, but god knows I forget sometimes. Never ran empty though (Although my DTE told me once that I was at 2 mi... )

 

[E.B. Cornburner]

The carmakers intentionally make the gages read full longer than usual. Supposedly, it gives the driver the impression it's getting better MPG.
Cadillac, back in the '80s and '90s when they had digital fuel gages that just displayed the gallons in the tank, intentionally eliminated the number 17 from the display. The gage would read "F" for the first two gallons consumed, then drop to 16 gallons.

The Explorer is no different than any other vehicle I've been around...The first half of the tank takes about twice as long to consume as the second half. I typically get around 300 miles out of a tank of fuel, and at 200 miles, I'm just barely hitting 1/2 tank. It then goes thru the second half of a tank in 100 miles!

 

[greenblinker]

Alright that makes some sense, i'm beginning to feel better about this, i'll keep watching the trip odo and see if i can get my usual mileage. hopefully this was just some fluke thing from running it low on gas for so long..