Fuel Warning Light & Tank Capacity

[guest1844]

As for filling to the brim, it seems to depend on the angle of the car... my local shell garage slopes downhill slightly and another I use slopes up. I can definitely get more in (5 litres / 50miles) on a downhill slope.
I think, since the petrol tank is under the front seats, there must be a little air pocket at the front of the tank if the car is pointing up at all. The fuel fill pipe, and presumably the corresponding vent, must be at the rear of the tank.

[guest2915]

I've not had the guts to take this to the wire but twice I had the fuel light go on in the Getz and was a good half.hour from the nearest petrol station.

With regards fuels frothing; my Honda dealer said there was no use bothering with cheap supermarket fuels as they are a false economy. He suggested BP and Shell to be the best. Even though they are more expensive they give the best MPG allegedly.

[VicW]

My GD CVT doesn't like Tesco 95,the consumption is worse yet the Tesco 99 is quite hightly rated in tests.
I mostly use BP and Shell 95 octane,I'm not convinced that it is worth the extra 7 or 8 pence a litre for the higher grade stuff.
When my low level light comes on there is about 7 litres left.

Vic.

[John Ratsey]

I once put 36.2 litres into my GE when refilling about 10 miles after the warning light came on. However, what really annoys me is the way that the miles remaining on the computer display gives sensible results for the top half of the tank, as if it was calculating using the whole capacity, and then as the tank approaches 1/4, the miles remaining drops much faster than the miles travelled so that it is around 0 when the warning light comes on, as if the computer was trying to pretend that the tank was empty. It would be much more useful if the miles remaining display was still the best estimate when the warning light came on.

John

[guest1060]

My GD has the same problem.  I estimate that the orange light comes on when there are 11 litres in the tank.  That is more than 25%.

My CR-V on the other hand has an ccurate fuel warning light. 

[guest2963]

hello

we get nearly 300 miles until the warning lamp comes on..............

 and then nearly 100 miles before she runs out of motion lotion 

and thats a 50/50 mix of motorway and town driving

we are happy with that

[guest2999]

Hi, my first post in this forum....  This is a really interesting topic,
I currently have a 56 plate 1.4 sport model Jazz, but have previously owned a 1.2 Jazz a few years ago. A few weeks ago I switched to using BP 98 (ultimate) fuel just to see what difference it made, I mostly do longish distance driving on A roads (40-50mph) and I noticed the mpg guage seems to like these speeds.
The fuel light came on at 390 miles on my last tank. Also at the petrol station I was supposedly doing 54mpg and filled up at 411 miles, but I am sure there was plenty left in the tank. I have since worked out that the car was actually probably doing more about 48mpg through a bit of mathematics.
My previous 1.2 Jazz had an incredible range, I regularly did 500 miles on one tank of petrol and the mpg guage often was showing over 60mpg. I wonder if these mpg displays in the cars are slightly exagerating things?
I have found that the more expensive fuel has had a big effect on the smoothness and flexibility of the engine (revs more freely) as well as extending the range. I have yet to determine whether with current fuel prices the benefits outweigh the cost though!

[culzean]

I have found that the more expensive fuel has had a big effect on the smoothness and flexibility of the engine (revs more freely) as well as extending the range. I have yet to determine whether with current fuel prices the benefits outweigh the cost though!

I have done this experiment many times on a GD 1.4 and found that 97 gives more power, flexibility, smoothness and about 10% extra mpg.   Seeing that 97 costs on average 7% more than 95,  the 10% would seem to make it worthwhile.  Just be careful that you don't change your driving style to use the extra va-va-voom though,  this puts the consumption back down to 95 level.   The 97 is supposed to clean out the fuel system and there does seem to be a 'hangover' effect - after you have used a tank of 97 the next one or 2 tanks of 95 seem to be 'better'.  In the handbook 95 is the 'minimum' octane rating for Jazz, and it does run much better on 97.   

In general I have found supermarket petrol to be rubbish, my wife used to fill her (identical) Jazz GD up with it and hers always felt sluggish and coarse compared to mine - I convinced her to use Shell or BP and it's much smoother now.  The supermarkets save money on fuel by buying it without a lot of the additives that should be in there.

[Geoffers]

I have to agree about supermarket fuel. We now use BP 95 almost exclusively in our's and get considerably more mpg than otherwise. If we can't get BP then we go for Shell.
But, with 97 octane, we found that the extra cost did not give a corresponding increase in mpg. It was close, but my wife does a 70 miles a day commute, so it had to be worth our while to change!
Maybe, when the commute stops, we will review that decision!

[guest3364]

Thread revival I know, but better than starting fresh on the same topic

Right I only got my jazz last Monday, and it had a little fuel left in, so didn't fill her to the top till Tuesday. I did this (43.6L filled to the brim) reset the trip, noted it all down in my little mpg book (my dad got us kids into recording miles and amounts filled at every fill as its a good indication of problems if your mpg drops and you have the history to back it up).

I drove to work all week- 100 miles, then this weekend went to my parents - a 256 mile round trip with a little added for pootling around.

All was gravy! MPG display hovered around 47-49 all week long, I'm used to Eco driving having owned a Civic VEi the last 3 years which with a carefull considerate drive always managed 45-50mpg (not bad after 207000 miles ) and after the usual 70-100 miles of driving and the gauge not moving one iota it started its decent to halfway at 240miles.

Cool for kittens i thought, 45Lish tank = 10 gal (as in EG civics) thus if the mpg display is 'right' i should get around 460-480miles from my tank, meaning i can get home from my parents, and still make it to work a few times next week before filling again.

Drove home this morning (nice 4am start) and all is not well..... after 120miles of home leg (370miles total) the fuel needle was below the 0 line and I was scared I would run out!

I got home thinking maybe I had a fuel leak? a rusty fuel line split (happened before on a civic a few yrs ago) but couldn't see any spots of the ground after parking up for an hour, and no smell of fuel under the car.

Now I went to work at 9am, and thought I had better put £10 worth in just in case i had a leak so I could get to work and fix when i get home. Went and put £10 in (7.5L /1.5gal roughly) and now its showing 1/4 full???!!!??

Are the gauges this rubbish on the jazz?? I was used to the EG civic's being a bit poop and going up and down as you went around corners - however at least you could rely on the warning light to come on with exactly 1Gal left without fail and they are using 20yr old tech.

Or do I have some problem with my jazzle??

Sry for the story.

Rachel

[JazzyB]

 I have always filled up when the fuel warning light comes on and the most I can squeeze in is approx 35 litres.

Now the other week the gauge was showing nearly empty but no fuel light on, but I decided to fill up anyway.

To my surprise the reading on the pump when it stopped said '40 litres' so that means there was only approx 2 litres left in the tank! The tank holds 42 litres according to Honda's book.

So what I wanna know is has my fuel warning light stopped working?

I did fill up the other day when the gauge was reading 1/4 full and the most I could get in was approx 30 litres so the gauge appears to be reading OK.

The other thing I can remember when I filled up approx 40 litres was that it took an age, the pump was so slow that I had to swap hands holding the pump.

[guest3721]

With regards to your warning light not working, I seem to remember (don't often let it get that low) that there are two warning light plus an audible warning.

Regards Dave

[Pine]

JazzyB,
Did you fill up at a different place to normal. I have noticed that different fuels seem to froth more than others and make the pump cut out sooner or later. When I had a GD model I could normally drive about 50 miles before the gauge moved down from the full mark, but on occasions it would be up to 90 miles before it moved. On my GE model the gauge starts to drop almost straight away. However I have only filled up once as the car is new to me. 

[JazzyB]

There is only one warning light to the left of the fuel gauge.

I have filled up at that garage before but the strange thing was that the pump took forever to fill up.

Not sure wether to risk waiting till the warning light comes on.

Running out of fuel is just so embrassing to say the least.

[JazzyB]

Just to update on my situation. I decided to risk running out of fuel the other month and to my relieve the fuel warning light came on. So I filled up with approx. 35 litres of fuel.

I then did the same again wait for the warning light and yes it came on again with about 35 litres filled.

So I am happy that my problem seems to be OK and that everything is working as it should.