when the gas light comes im assuming we have approximately 2 gallons left in the tank. when i stop to fill up i only am able to fill up too 12-13 gallons(i always overfill). i have 2500 miles on my car. is anyone else experiencing this or is this normal?

 

i thought fuel capacity was 17 gallons?

 

there's a 3 gallon reserve tank. there are a couple threads on this.

 

17 is correct

 

Yep the fuel light and the miles to empty are very conservative. They want to make sure people don't start suing if they run out of gas.

 

I was surprised by this. When my fuel light came on I filled up with 12.5 gallons...that means I had 4.5 left to go...

 

The light is supposed to indicate you are getting low on fuel, not that you have to fill up right now. How many miles did your computer say you still could drive?

 

30 miles

 

when the light comes on.. you still have about 40 miles to empty which is about 2 gallons... plus your 2.5 gallons of reserve once your indicator hits 0 miles to empty... that explains your 4 gallons missing

 

When my light came on I had 4.9 gallons left (took 12.1 gal), and it showed 50 miles left.

 

GREAT! That's just plain stupid! What Acura has effectively done by falsifying the available fuel remaining is to 100% negate the benefit. Once people start realizing that ZERO is not actually ZERO, they will start thinking that they can go longer and longer. Effectively CAUSING people to run out of gas. Who did Acura hire to do the studies on the effectiveness of such a lame brain method? Arrgghhh! At least on the Benz, when you get to zero, it's pretty much zero (maybe a gallon). Ran my TL down to 5 miles the other day (intentionally) and could only get 14 gallons in there. I mean, really! What kind of idiot needs 90 miles of reserve (interstate) or 50 miles of reserve (in the city)???

 

I'm thinking that Acura just wants to reduce the number of calls for roadside assistance by people who ran out of gas.

 

I can just imagine the scenario: Ditsy blond lawyer runs out of gas in "bad"part of town. While looking for gas gets gang banged by local thugs, oops that will be 50 million dollars please Mr Honda! Thats why it is so conservative. I hardly ever wait for the silly light to fuel up.

 

:lol1: :lol2:

Blonde ditz.... can i join though?

 

Vtech, I don't ever wait for the light to go on either, it only went on once in 8 years on my old car, but it is so far off on this car, I am running it a little lower ( I still had almost 5 gallons left), otherwise I would be at the gas station a few times a week.

Usually cars are set to have the light go on when it hits the reserve, but this one is a little too high (1/4 tank)

 

Seems to me this would come in to play most on long trips.
On a long trip you may want to minimize stops and maximize distance between them. I guess just knowing that there's a couple in reserve is good enough; seems kinda silly though.

 

We all talked about this issue a month ago. It could be the safety design for TL. Most of GM cars have this ridiculous feature. It will tell you EMPTY when the tank still has 4-5 gallons left.

Then, the trip computer will give you another signal to remind you again if you try to ignore the EMPTY warning light. It may still have 2-3 gallon left.

Then, if don't like to listen to it, it's all your own risk 'cause TL has told you twice to pay attention to it.



Also, when you enter the NAVIGATION's setup mode, you will see our Navi has another trip mileage calculator inside. They even tell you another information about how many miles you may be able to drive.

IMHO, all they do is to make sure you will not run out of gas in the long distance drive or your TL will not be ruined by any ignorance.

I always fill it up at 1/4 of gauge...if I can go.


Distance to Empty....Sort of by VTEC=happiness

 

I ran my first tank of gas to 2 miles until empty. I still had 3 gallons left. It kinda defeats the purpose of having this functionality.

 

I'll have to be a contrarian, and say that you guys have it good. The out of gas light on my car comes on moments before the car is out of gas. When it comes on, the car is saying, "Pull over right now and find gas immediately." The trigger point comes when a fractional gallon is left, which is not very good when the car gets less than 20 per gallon. It's not fun to stand on the side of freeway waiting for gas while traffic zooms by.

 

Apparently, they don't worry about frivolous law suits as much in Germany.

When my '99 323i hit the bottom of "E" on the fuel gauge, I was literally running on fumes. I was testing the car to see how much margin I had once the gauge was near empty, so I made sure I was near gas stations.

I was sputtering when I pulled into the station ... closest I've ever been to running out of gas in my car. BTW, the BMW owners manual said that I should have had an extra 0.75 gallons in the tank - apparently their metric conversions were a little off.

¿GotJazz?

 

when guage reaches 1/4 tank, new cars are fuel injected, you do not want crud to be sucked up from tank, nor do you want your submersed fuel pump to run dry. This is very important in winter time as well as moisture can cause problems if tank is too
low.

 

jyg tl 3 - Crud in a new trank. Don't think so. Injection, yea so what. Every car I've owned in the last 15 years has been fuel injected (it's not new). True, FI could be a pain if you ever ran out (but in 15 years it's never happend to me). Moisture problems? Not unless you let the car sit for months on end. Did you have any VALID points?

 

I don't know that this is specific to Acura or even just the TL. My wife has an 02 Odyssey and we have the same issue. The light comes way too early with about 4 gallons left. It has a 20 gallon tank and the most we have ever been able to get into it is about 17.5. My 94 Accord doesn't have this issue.