Bit of a strange one this,

On thursday i put £6 of petrol in my ford focus as the trip said about 48 miles left which the went up to about 66 miles on the trip meter after  topped it up.
yesterday I put another £10 in on my way home, driving back i noticed the trip was at 65 miles left, I assumed at some point this would rectify itself, i have used the car this morning and it has gone down to 61 miles on the trip so obviously it is working, but i called in at the garage to see if there was anyway it didn't dispense the petrol, they assured me it wasn't possible and had no other complaints. So i'm totally baffled.

Looking at the fuel gauge I can't tell if the fuel showing is correct any one know how many litres I should have in the tank from the picture.

 

£6 of petrol!?  

It's just not enough for the fuel gauge to register, put a decent amount in and it'll move.  

Based on the fact that the petrol tank of this car has a usable fuel capacity of 50 Litres / 11 UK Gallons at the current position of the gauge there should be about 13 Liters / 2.85 UK Gallons of petrol left.

Note that the remaining distance to empty is calculated based on several data like for example average fuel consumption, current fuel consumption, driving style, amount of petrol in the fuel tank, Percentage of short trips, etcetera. The amount of petrol in the fuel tank is both measured by the tank sender inside the fuel tank and calculated by measuring the amount of fuel that was used since the fuel tank was full. By filling up small quantities of fuel instead of filling the fuel tank completely the system is not capable to calculate the actual amount of petrol inside the fuel tank accurately. In this case the system uses the less accurate resistance signal of the tank sender to calculate the distance to empty.

Thanks JW1982 for the reply, using my poor maths calculation i was thinking 14/16 litres from what was originally in the tank, i just can't figure out why it didn't register the £10 i put in on the trip, but did on a smaller amount, very odd.

4 hours ago, TomsFocus said:

£6 of petrol!?  

It's just not enough for the fuel gauge to register, put a decent amount in and it'll move.  

I'm with you LOL Putting in dribs and drabs doesn't make you use less, suck it up man and give her a decent drink!

Amazing how people don't read posts properly then go off on a tangent trying to take the ***** with someone who has to budget carefully, hope it happens to you one day.

 

36 minutes ago, thewelder said:

Amazing how people don't read posts properly then go off on a tangent trying to take the ***** with someone who has to budget carefully, hope it happens to you one day.

 

Stephen and I are two of the tightest people on the forum tbf!  I personally have to work out how much each trip is going to cost and whether I can justify it...budgeting doesn't mean just dribbling in a couple of litres at a time though.

You've put £16 of fuel in in the last 3 days, if you'd just stuck £20 in on Thursday it would've been enough to register and give a slightly more accurate range reading.  I wasn't trying to take the mick, parking on a hill will move the float more than sticking £6 of fuel in, the range simply won't be accurate with those small amounts.

From what Wilco said above you'd get more reliable results if you kept the tank full rather than nearly empty. Once you've taken the hit to get it topped up it wouldn't cost you any more to keep it full by spending a few pounds to top it up every few days.

6 hours ago, TomsFocus said:

Stephen and I are two of the tightest people on the forum tbf!

I literally am sitting here laughing! I love that quote! I just drove 2 miles out of my way this morning to save 2p/litre on a 50 litre fill up! Every £1 helps... 🤣

Maybe he's like me and thinking if i brim fill it and it breaks down irrepairably, i'll have to go through the hassle of (Hasselhoff,lol) of getting it all out again, that'd be a right pain..