Gas tank size
Does any body know how much fuel can be put into the tank over what the manufacturer says the size is? For example lets say the manual says you have a 12.0 gallon tank how much extra gas will it take to the top of the filler and how do they figure what the maximum capacity is? Also is there a standard for the low fuel light is it set at a certain amount of gas remaining?
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As for how much you can squeeze in... I think that also depends on the design. Probably mostly how long the fuel neck is (and its diameter). |
There is no rule. I fill my Civic and Accord to the brim,,, right up to the filler neck edge. Both cars I can get almost 2 gallons in after pump click off. If I wanted to burp the tank Im sure I could get more in them. I take what I can get and know Im not going to flood out the evp. system.
I had a Chevy once with the huge evp. canister on the frame by the rad. I over filled the tank on it once like I do my Hondas and gas ran out it.... Well DUH!!! the canister and vent line where set at half a tank with what was a small pee trap in the line. There is no rule for this other than looking at a picture of your tank/fuel system and using your best judgement... psy |
I would think that the possible overfill amount varies by car. When I was hanging with the hybrid crowd, several reported 2 gallon overfills, and they were abused for possibly filling the evap cannister and causing worse emissions.
There is definitely not a standard on how many gallons are left when the low fuel light comes on. On my E, it comes on with about 3 gallons left. |
What I heard is if you have a yellow low fuel you have 2 gallons and red is 1 gallon. Over filling well it depends upon the location of the vent hose - mine is in the filler area at the bend where the fuel nozzle goes in so not a problem since it pours out before the hose gets below the fuel level but there may be a pocket of air in the top of the tank too but it would not make sense to vent there. As far as fill up to the top is to the top 11.9 gallons is my capacity and I ran it dow as low as I dare to and put in 11.1 gallons filling it to the brim - usually it takes 1 gallon after the first shutoff click.
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Hey I when your geo control arm went...what happened?
Hey I hope I have the right guy...let me know if not. Sorry to post here but it wouldn't let me email you....
I've a 96 firefly with rust in the same spots as yours gave out on but I have to make a 300 mile trip before fixing it up or scrapping it... When yours finally went how did it go and what specific driving habits do you recommend if I have to drive my car a bit? I mean, slow (under 55) no hard turns or braking, avoiding potholes...but what else? I think mine's somewhat less rotten than the pix you posted https://server6.theimagehosting.com/a...&user_id=48646 In fact here are my pix..there's still quite a bit of good metal on the bottom of the control arm mounts...but not a great deal connecting THAT to the frame https://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/...10&uid=4454085 in case it won't load...picturetrail.com then sbellerby very interested in your comments...or anyone else's that might know how to baby a rusted frame near front lower control arm mount S |
Yup it's me . . . First thing I noticed is the steering started requiring more left to go straight about 30 degrees from center for about a month but towards the last few miles I noticed that the steering started feeling really loose like I was driving on ice then I went through some steep hills and turns on a bumpy road crossing a railroad track braking hard which probably really broke it loose then accellerated hard up a hill left sweeping turn that finally did it in . . . as I reached the top of the hill which leveled off it really started to pull left I braked gently and check the tires for a flat then took off slowly and it kept pulling left I applied a little brake and the wheel broke loose and locked against the back fo the wheel well skidding to a stop at the curb and that was all she wrote until 3 hours of welding got her mobile again but it didn't leave the yard after that - then the gas line rusted out and when the registration expired I removed the plates and told my buddy to haul it to the junk yard.
If you can get someone to mig or stick weld some vertical beads around the bottom of the chassis then it could last a while. My biggest problem was that the alignment shim area was gone so it would require a lot of work to get it welded in the right position. And after driving it around in the grass yard with the quick welding it just didn't feel right so since I had the xB running so well I gave up on owning two cars at the same time. I do miss it on long trips on the highway . . . can't beat 50+ MPG. OMG!! That looks way worse than mine 2 weeks before mine failed I did a brake job on the bad side and it looked like it was ok - no holes like you have there. If anything the front edge is the important part to weld up with anything you can add to strengthen the front of the bar area that the suspension pivots on since the rear of the bar is helped with the trailing arm. The front of my "horn" was what bent outwards when it failed. |
I owned a '95 Honda Civic VX hatchback from new until I sold it a couple of months ago w/ 225,000 miles on it. It was a 10 gallon tank, and I could regularly overfill by 5 gallons after the pump clicked off as long as the pump was very sensitive and allowed me to let it trickle in. I never saw the gas sitting in the filler neck...it always settled back down. My maximum overfill (to see how much overfill I could do) was 5.5 gals. I didn't want to do more because I was concerned it might cause a problem. I used to get 750+ miles per tankful on a regular basis. Never had any problems with the engine running strangely.
I now have a '95 Civic DX hatchback and have so far overfilled 2 gals. The gas seems to settle down in the filler neck the same way as my VX did, so I anticipate being able to do some massive overfills on it as well. Steve |
huh ???? you put 15 gallons in a 10 gallon tank?
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He didn't say he put in 15 gallons, he said he put in 5 more after the pump shut itself off.
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My owner's manual says that my gas tank holds 10.6 gallons, but I managed to squeeze 10.9 gallons in the tank from a complete empty right to the filler edge. There's no 'fuel low' light on my car, but the needle was pointing right at the top of the letter 'E' on the gas gauge when the engine started sputtering:
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I would say every manufacture is different. The 99-03 TDI's are suppose to ahve a 14 gallon tank but I have put 16.2 in when I was running on fumes...
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"huh ???? you put 15 gallons in a 10 gallon tank?"
"He didn't say he put in 15 gallons, he said he put in 5 more after the pump shut itself off." Both of you are right. I was able to regularly trickle in 5 gallons more after the pump shut itself off. Sometimes the car was completely or almost completely empty (i.e. the pump stopped at 9.8, 9.9 or 10.0 gals) and I could still squeeze another 5 gals in if the pump was sensitive enough to let me trickle it in. And the extra 5 gals really was in there because I got 250+ more miles from the that tankful of gas (regardless of where the pump stopped, as long as I put in an extra 5 gals). One of the inexplicable wonders of the '92 - '95 Civic VX hatchback...perhaps also w/ the DX hatchback as I'll be trying the same with said car on my next tankful. Steve |
My 97 VW Passat wagon has a published capacity of 18.5 gallons (70 liters). I have pumped in 28.5 gallons after having driven to the station.
The 95~97 Passat sedan has the same published fuel tank capacity, but has an entirely different fuel tank. The most I was ever able to add (without having run dry) to the two of those I owned was about 24 gallons. Neither the sedan nor the wagon has no low fuel warning. But at 50 mpg, "E" doesn't mean 'empty, it means 'enough'.:D |
I am surprised at the ability at add that much more gas and then be able to use it. Once the pump I was using sucked the gasoline back in with the vacuum sensing cut off system so each time I clicked in some gas it sucked it back out. But the only way I think you could get 5 more gallons into a tank is if the tank had a blatter that expanded (prius) or there was a misprint in the owners manuel listing the capacity. You could be getting a pump error and we all know that has happened at gas stations or maybe if your car has a really big charcoal canister that can hold a few gallons and it gets filled . . . Only thing else I could think of is the tank bottom or sides bend giving it more capacity when filled - there is some small amount of pressure from filling the neck to the top. My Geo used to run rough when it got low and the needle would stop moving when going up and down hills - the rough running was caused by air pumping in the gas line - I actually ran it low then pumped the rest with the fuel pump out into a gas can to see how much was left. Stopping at the first click depends upon the gas foaming properties and the flow down the filler pipe and the bend in the nozzle into the filler pipe. The gas comes out of the nozzle really fast and it splashing back up is a factor of a lot of things including anti-blowback flaps in the filler pipe. Diesel filling stations for boating even have high speed hoses that pump something like 50 gallons a minute which you need when filling 1000 gallon tanks!
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On our gasser I very rarely "top it off" because unless you’re going to drive it a distance right away it might expand and leak out.
For those of us with diesel the expansion rate is much less. I top off every time and have never had any issues. Even filling and then letting it sit in summer. Diesel just doesn't expand as much. |
Overfilling-
For quite a while during the time we've owned the ZX2 I filled it quite often by continually clicking the nozzle till fuel ran out the filler neck. I thought that was the only way to know I had a full tank. I think I did have a chock-full tank but that was causing a problem in itself. Occasionally the car would run badly for a few seconds while driving, took me a long time to wise up to what was happening.
I have a CD of workshop manual information and the tank drawing shows considerable space in the tank intended for fumes and expansion. The info also speaks of overfilling and the likelihood of actually having liquid fuel migrate to the charcoal canister. When the evap system purges it dumps the vapors and liquid, if present, into the engine. This fuel is not metered, just dumped. I believe this is exactly what was happening to my car. I finally read the owner's manual and it cautioned against overfilling and recommended a max of 3 clicks beyond auto shutoff of pump. I have used 1 click beyond auto shutoff for over 7000 miles without deviating. Most of my fills have been at the same pump/same station. Remembering from previous fills, I could probably say I could force another 1 1/2-2 gallons in with multiple clicks. Especially after I got on the serious gas mileage kick I became so exasperated with trying to get consistent fills, I felt I had to do something different. This led me to ScanGauge. ScanGauge picks up the injector pulse width and count from the ECU and uses this info to compute the amount of fuel the engine uses. After the miles I have travelled with SG, I am totally confident it gives a far more accurate measure of fuel used. No way would I ever dismiss SG fuel-used figures in favor of pump readings. I have been dead on with SG a number of times with gallons pumped and within 1% for the rest. Any one of these times I could have forced more fuel into the tank, declared SG wrong and done my own calculations for a better FE figure. I will not do that. If I had no more faith than that in the accuracy of SG, I would not even use one. I do not correct any fills considering the accuracy I know I have. I believe interjecting my own figures into SG to get it to match the pump would cause me the same difficulty and uncertainty with SG I see so many others having. Since I started using 1 extra click filling, the occasional rough engine I mentioned earlier has never happened again. My mileage also picked up at that time. SG changed my driving drastically which accounts for a lot of that. But I am sure the overfilling I had been doing was wasting gas thru the evap system. |
CO, do you wait for the low fuel light to come on or what set point do you refuel? according to the manual our cars have a 12.8 gallon tank. i've never got more than mid 9 galon in when the light would come on.
I might have to do what clencher does and find out what it takes from dead empty. |
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I have a suggestion for you. Make sure SG is set for zero correction for tank fillup. Always do 1 click past auto shutoff fills and believe your SG for the gallons used. Do not reset the SG to adjust to what you pumped. First tank may depress you because you probably won't be filling as full as you were before. It may take a couple fills to get SG stabilized but then you can believe what it says, for gallons used and tank info. Otherwise you are telling SG it is wrong and to adjust for what you think is right. You are not getting what SG is designed for when you interject commands to change it's calcs based on questionable pump fill amounts. It works for me. |
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