Nikki, exactly why do you want to know how far you can go once the “low gas” light illuminates? I hope you realize that running low on gas once is risky, and doing it regularly jeopardizes the health of your fuel pump. Doing so really isn’t a good idea. Realize too that it doesn’t cost any more to keep the top half of the tank full than it does to keep the bottom half of the tank full.
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I think the OP is lost in cyberspace.
I’ve never had the low fuel light go on. I fill up when I have half a tank. You never know when you’ll need it.
Last year we were heading to NY from Minnesota and when we got on the Ohio Tollway, a bad accident a hundred miles away caused the freeway traffic to be re-routed. Yeah the re-route from Purgatory. No patrol directing, just road blocks. Back roads, miles and miles of cars and trucks going 5 mph. I finally just broke loose and headed south to bypass the whole thing. With Nav, and a helpful guy, it was only a three hour delay. I woulda been out of luck without a full tank of gas and and empty bladder. The thing is you never never know and it can come out of the clear blue. Worse in winter where a jack-knifed semi can shut the road down for hours.
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Your owners manual will tell you the size of your gas tank. Stop and fill up when you see your light come on. Do the subtraction and you have your answer. Your risk aversion is up to you. Most people fall somewhere between Bing and Kramer.
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If the fuel pump is external? Mine is.
Yep, fill up one and empty the other…never pass up an open restroom!
Would you like to explain that. How is your fuel pump external?
However, just as your coolant removes the heat from the engine by flowing through it, the fuel removes heat from the pump by flowing through it.
I think RandomTroll refers to his old Toyota pickup. My 1979 Toyota 4X4 had an external aftermarket electric fuel pump located outside and above the fuel tank.
It’s mounted on the side of the engine, works off a cam. Isn’t this the way they all used to be?
On my current daily driver, the low fuel light comes on when the DTE reads 50 miles, it then reminds you again at the 25, 10, 5, 0 mile DTE marks. I’ve found that it’s very conservative, as I once went about 4 miles beyond the zero miles to empty notification, and when I fill up, there was a still about a 1/2 a gallon left in the tank. On my previous Mustang the low fuel light would come on when there’s about 2 gallons left. I would check and see how many miles I’d gone since the last fill up (trip odometer), and work out how soon I had to go before I really needed fuel. Usually it was around 35 miles in typical driving or closer to 45 miles on the highway. On my F-150, the tank is larger (30 gallons) and I drive it so infrequently that I rarely have a chance to run it low on fuel. I typically fill it up when I fill up the gas cans. My old Bronco was different, it’s fuel gauge was unreliable, and totally non-linear If I filled it up, it would stay on full for a good 100 miles then drop to about the 2/3 mark, then after a while it would drop to the 1/2 tank mark, then stay there until I was below 1/4 tank, then it would drop immediately to that, it read fairly true from that point onwards. I got in the habit of using the trip odometer to give an approximation of how much fuel I had (fuel economy was a consistent 9-11 MPG). Luckily it too had a large fuel tank (32 gallons), so even when it dropped to 1/4 tank, there was still a comfortable amount of fuel in the tank.
Yeah, but that was a long, long time ago!
You’ve piqued my curiosity: whatcha got? I like old cars.
An '87 Toyota pickup, Xtra-Cab, long-bed, 5-speed manual, 4 cylinders, carbureted, 2WD. You’ve given me advice on it before. I don’t think of it as old enough to like, not that I mind. Didn’t you offer to buy it years ago?