Gas gauge help please.... Car died
 

So td on my way back to wrk on my lunch break my car decided to die. awesome right? so i call the dealer and explain to him that i got off an exit ramp went to accelerate and the car had no power. then i pushed the clutch in and the car died.. so he says heres a dumb question, do u have gas... so i go yea i put 20 in last night... turn on my car and i have nooo gas... no warning light no beeps nothing. no gas and my range is flashing 76 miles. so apparently SOMEHOW i went through about a 1/4 tank of gas in about 50 miles... i dont see that being possible. so i put gas in the car, it starts up and drives.. :ugh2:

I live 10 miles from work and i had 3 dots on my gas gauge. way more than enought to go 10 miles. i dont have a gas leak that i see yet. im bringing it to the dealer tn and they are going to look at it tm..

So does anyone have any ideas? bad gauge? bad fuel level sender?

My car only has 5200 on it

fuel starvation? was it a steep banked exit ramp?

This has happened a couple of times to me - there is a slightly graded ramp that I take home sometimes which I can take pretty fast if no cars are around me - If my gas is down to about less than 4-5 leds then when i gun it out of the apex as I start climbing uphill the car gets some fuel starvation. Now - the first time i didnt know what was going on so i turned the car off - and that was stupid. The next time I just came to a stop in neutral and waited a while for the car to get leveled - put it in gear and it was ok all the way to the gas station.

Due to this - after every track session I gas up to a full tank :)

TravisJB has def dealt w/ this issue - and i believe has a fix for it

Nah it was a faily level exit ramp. ive took exit ramps doing 75 with 2 dots and climbed hills with 2 dots and never had it starv

thats what i thought at first. it sat for about 30 min and still didnt start and my gas level never went back up.. the gas gauge is the only thing i dont like about the car. i knew it was going to be a problem. lol

My experience was during an autocross. I arrived with 5 dots. After three runs it was showing two dots and flashing xx miles left. After two more runs I left to get gas. Driving on normal roads and under no twisting or hard braking it returned to 4 dots and quit flashing. I filled up with 16 gallons. I figured with all of the sloshing around the fuel gauge pickup wasn't reading the fuel properly. No issues since.

Same thing happened to me last week. Had 3 LED's lit on the fuel gauge, around 60-70 mile range indicated. Took a long sweeping freeway on-ramp and accelerated up to 70MPH before the accelerator stopped responding. Pulled over to the shoulder, car cranks but doesn't fire.

AAA dropped in a gallon of gas, fired right up. I've been trying to keep no less than 1/2 tank in it since..

Thats EXACTLY what happened to me. i just dont feel like filling up every couple days.... yea im lazy haha

Lovely, just put my car in the garage after a road trip with 2 LED's left on and it showing about 44 miles left. haha, I hope its accurate so I can get it to a gas station!

I've never had this problem but for the 1st 6 months or so when i would fill up the 1st LED would not light up but tank was full. I said if this kept up i'd bring it in after i hit about 3K miles it never happened again.

I feel like I always only get like 70 miles or so for the last quarter tank.

I think that there is some problem with the 370Z fuel gauge. It is not very accurate when it gets down to a 1/4 tank or less.

no doubt the fuel gage sucks. in mine the low fuel warning will come on anywhere between 2 and 4 dots never the same each time.

one time i walked on the wild side and drove with no dots showing and all the lines showing for at least 15 miles. whos knows how many gallons are in the tank when the first warning comes on.

I normally fill up at a quarter tank, and when I got to that the first week, I decided to get gas the next day. The next morning, I had an eighth of a tank showing. Apparently the other 1/8 evaporated! It doesn't seem very consistent down low.

so i just called the dealer and my car is done and nothing is wrong with is.. go figure. haha ill just make sure i dont let it go below 1/4 tank

At five (5) dots I fill-up and it takes ±13.8 gallons; the 370Z has an 18 gallons fuel tank.

My gas gauge goes nuts sometimes after some hard acceleration. Its keeps thinking im driving at full throttle everywhere and the dots just tick down every 5 miles or so. Then I get gas and find out I had like half a tank left. Its really really annoying.

Mine didn't start doing that until after 8K miles!

Every time I get a new car, within the first week, I carry a 2 gallon plastic gas container and run out of fuel on purpose just to see what the gauge indicates and how the car acts when it runs out of fuel. I also fill the tank to the limit every time I refuel and set the trip meter.....and figure my mileage on every tank so I will know where the gauge is when it runs out.....this way you should know how many miles you have left before you run out......comes in very handy when you are traveling and between exits on the interstate. I have found out that most gauges are what I call "Top Loaded". By that I mean the top half tank will give you 200 miles and the bottom half will give only 160 miles.

this is fuel starvation, not a running out of gas situation. In hard right turns, the fuel must slosh or something and doesn't get into the pickup. I've been towed off the track before not knowing what happened, and I'm fairly sure that had I just shut the car off and restarted it, the fuel gauge would have reset to half tank, where it really was.

btw, exiting the carousel at Road America at 5500 rpm in 4th gear, it is happening to me occassionally with 1 dot not lit (basically full tank!), and always with 2 not lit. major PITA!

Spearfish rode with me today and got to experience it in my car as a passenger. It can be scary at 100mph with someone right on your bumper and you unexpectedly slow instead of accelerate!

:iagree:

If you fill up when the warning shows, you can get a good idea.

Any fix to this? i have like 2,300 miles on mine, went to fill it up to winterize it and of course the last LED isnt lighting up. I thought maybe i didnt fill it all the way, went back and pumped more and poured gas on the car. I am not a happy camper....

Running yourself out of gas on purpose or not is not a good idea. The fuel also cools/lubricates the fuel pump. If it overheats.....BOOM!!!! No, just kidding. But you could do damage to your fuel pump.

What he said. If you look under the car the gas tank is shaped like an upside-down U with the driveshaft running through the middle. The problem with this set up is that the pick up is only on one side of the U. This makes it very easy for all the gas to transfer to the side of the U without the pickup and cause fuel starvation.

Maybe it needs a pipe connecting the two halves?

I have been doing this for more than 40 years .....on about 10 cars....never have I ever had any problem.......