How to account for accidentally resetting trip meter
 

Hi,

I've been religiously tracking my family's fuel up since I signed up. Unfortunately, the dealership had Jen's car and reset the trip meter so I have no idea how many km were on that tank.

How can I add a new fuel up without messing up the data? When tracking with the trip meter, it asks you to enter 'Kilometers since last fuel-up'. However I have no idea what the km were of our last full fuel-up. I can't guess or enter 0 as it throws the numbers right off.

When tracking via odometer readings there is an option for a missed fuel up. Is there anything like this when a vehicle is set to track via trip meter? Selecting 'This is a partial fuel-up' wouldn't help as it was a full fuel-up.

Regards,

Marc

I would not enter that tank into your log. Personally, I always record my trip odometer readings before dropping off my vehicles for service so if it is reset, I can still do a little math and enter the tank.

Most dealerships, at least here in the US note the mileage when the vehicle is received. This is usually noted on the write-up of services performed. Perhaps a little subtraction might give you a relative idea of how many kms were traveled prior to dropping it off?

Otherwise, skipping it would be your only option.

Yea skip it, or if you want to still keep the cost factor, then just add the litres and price but check partial fuel up. I had the same thing happen to me when I changed my battery, just happened to be the best tank ever. But I kind of guessed mine, I knew roughly what it was.

Sometimes I want to reset my trip meter mid tank, so I reset it when it hits a round figure such as 700, then I just remember to add it on come fuel up time.

But how does one 'skip' a fuel-up when it's asking for 'Kilometers since last fuel up'? You must input a figure in there.

Our next fuel up, after the trip meter was reset, was a partial fuel-up but I cannot log it in Fuelly as the 'Kilometers since last fuel up' are unknown and without logging this fuel up as a partial-fuel up it will throw the numbers of our next fuel up way off since Fuelly will not know the last fuell-up was partial.

I performed a full-fuel up yesterday but since the last fill was an un-logged partial fill in which we traveled only 317 km. When inputting 'Kilometers since last fuel up' as only 317 km when this was in fact a full fuel-up, it throws the data wayyyy off and gives me an extremely high fuel consumption figure since I could not enter the last trank as a partial fill up. When I try to input our new full tank fill, as I said, it throws the numbers way off.

What you do is just fuel up the vehicle, reset the trip odometer, and not enter that fuelup in Fuelly. Restart entering fuelups in fuelly with the next fuel stop.

Why Trip Meter?
 

Curious -- Other than calculating the MPG on the first fuel-up, is there an advantage to tracking via the trip meter instead of the odometer? I've noodled it quite a bit and it just seems more risky to me due to the very topic of this thread.

-Lee

There are problems with running by odometer reading... If you forget to enter a fillup the next time you get fuel it looks like your mileage doubled.

The trip odometer is better in my opinion, as it allows you to add fuel ups whenever you feel like it. Perhaps you might add a few partial fill ups during the week, but only want to add full fuel ups, well that's fine. Or perhaps you only want to keep track of a long road trip? That's fine too. You can add 1 a week or 1 a year if you want. It only takes 1 missed fuel up to skew all your data using the odometer reading.

Before I started using Fuelly, and at the time, having a very inconsistent/unreliable fuel gauge, I tracked my MPG using my Trip Meter.

But when I joined Fuelly I found it much easier to keep track of fuel-ups using my Odometer. Granted, even after replacing my fuel pump and fuel level sensor/float, and now having a more reliable gauge(as reliable as it came from the factory, which isn't saying much... lol), I still reset my Trip Meter at every fill-up. Perhaps this is just out of habit. But it also gives me a real-time estimate of how my fuel economy is for that particular tank.

For example, I don't drive my car as often these days. I filled up recently only because my gas gauge was reading about at the 1/4 mark. However, my Trip Meter said I had easily another 100 miles or so to go before empty. My last fill-up shows a drop in my MPG, which threw a red flag for me. I realize when I do drive, it's now mostly short trips, with city driving, which does a number on economy as it is, but I also decided to start looking into other issues. Turns out, my o2 sensors are acting funky, and causing the car to run rich. Yay for dumping fuel unnecessarily.




TL;DR-
Both methods of tracking have their advantages. I use both. For Fuelly, I prefer Odometer.