agreed! blahaha. i too HATE nissans right now.

 

Agreed. 422 miles traveled and only filled up 9.434.

I've done 7 hour road trips in the door and 350 miles, is a good time for a pit stop for me and the car.

 

I'm more than willing to accept the conservative gas gauge...in exchange for the room and flexibility offered by The Honda Fit.

 

i wonder if there's fuel starve issues when taking fast turns near bottom of the tank..

 

My Aunt had a late 1990's Toyota Camry, and unfortunately a steeply angled driveway.
If she let her fuel get too low, you had to either push the Camry up to level ground or let it roll back to level ground to get it to start.

 

I guess in an $18k car I can't expect them to build a fuel pump that doesn't overheat without being submerged.

And no, I don't drive until it's empty. I just stopped freaking out when the light comes on because I know I can keep going another 50 miles if I don't find a gas station. A lot of my driving is very late at night when everything's closed.

 

Maybe you missed my point and the post above that included a link to Clark Howard.

You can spend $400,000 on a car and it will still have a fuel pump that will last longer if kept submerged.

Let it run dry and it will give you the life expectancy of a frame mounted external pump from the late '70's. They are essentially the same pump, but mounted in the tank to give it extra protection.

If you have a DFI car, you get the joy of having both a fuel pump in tank and a mechanical pump underhood. Two chances of failure. Once again, this still applies with a half million dollar supercar.

I guess you also think that by having a cheap car you are missing out on not needing motor oil. Guess what...all gasoline powered vehicles, regardless of cost will last longer if you keep oil in them.

 

I read the link and got your point. On an inexpensive car it's understandable. On an expensive car it's nutty that they can't put in a better fuel pump that won't fail when the tank runs low a number of times.

If they didn't want us to know this they could put the pump's intake higher up in the tank so we never knew there was unusable fuel in the tank. But it'd be preferable if they just made a pump that wouldn't overheat.

 

It's a standard design feature on most cars to use the fuel in the gas tank as a coolant for the fuel pump. It's actually a brilliant idea and works extremely well. Fuel pump failures are rare nowadays. Keep in mind that in the colder parts of this continent the natural coldness provides a lot of cooling for the fuel pump as is - if your tank was pretty much empty it simply wouldn't matter in the winter time.

 

Standard or not, it still sucks. It's making every car in America carry an extra gallon or two of unusable fuel every single mile driven. How much fuel does it waste to carry that small amount of extra gas, times every mile driven every day for every car in the whole country? Might it be cheaper in the long run to make better fuel pumps?

When they did away with 5 mph bumpers (thanks a lot, Reagan), they saved a few dollars per car and drove up insurance rates many times that amount. Not to mention extra injuries in collisions.

Penny wise, pound foolish.

 

I guess that at the end of the day no one has come up with that better fuel pump.

 

You folks can commiserate with other Honda model owners. The 2017+ CR-V has a very conservative warning light, too. Lots of comments on it!

 

My mom's 2011 Altima has a 20 gallon tank and can get 35mpg on the hwy. That's 700 miles on a tank. Impressive, but it's not a car I'd want as a daily driver.

 

i believe it mang. that is a super hauler for cross country.. definitely welcome as a rental for biz trips.

 

Just this week I drove for two days with two pips on the gauge and no 'near empty' light and I started thinking maybe the Fit was getting hinky. Now admittedly I stayed in town and only drove maybe four miles total over those two days, but the light has always shown before as soon as the gauge dropped to double pips. It finally lit up on the morning of the third day as I was leaving town. Where I live gasoline is MUCH cheaper (at least 25 cents/gal difference) over the river in the next county or down the other way across another county line so I have to schedule fill-ups to coincide with errands. That's not hard because I live in a place that's all bedroom and only a tiny smattering of retail -- mostly bars but an Aldi now too, which Ms Bach just loves.

 

Usual Caveat Admission: I could be totally wrong about this......

But as a result of this thread, and the debate about the importance of filling up "early" and keeping the fuel pump "submerged" and the speculation that the pancake like design of the fuel tank made this more important, I tried to find a diagram of exactly where the fuel pump was located in the tank of a recent model Honda Fit. I couldn't really find a diagram or picture that fully revealed this.

But what I did find, was that many of the recommendations, were NOT about keeping the fuel pump supposedly "submerged" but simply not letting the tank run empty.
The idea being, as long as there was fuel that the fuel pump could pump...that action in of itself keeps it running properly. Where you get into trouble is when the tank is actually running dry, or is empty, and if you repeatedly try to restart the car with no fuel available. THEN the fuel pump can intake air, overheat and prematurely wear.
But from all the info I could obtain, as long as the fuel pump HAS fuel to pump...you're OK.
Which would suggest to me, that as long as I'm filling up with the usual Gallon or Gallon and 1/2 or more left...I'm OK. Even if that is happening quite a bit after the warning light appears, and even the range to empty gauge has reached 0.

Let me once again concede this is all speculation on my behalf, and also concede, that it's NOT a good idea to run your tank low, or down to empty or risk reaching an empty tank. A lot of damage can occur...outside of just the pain of being stranded.

I leave it to each owner operator to apply the ritual they like best. For me? I'm not trying to prove anything or play a game. But again, just for me? It seems like at least when the low fuel indicator comes on....it is a very, very conservative warning.

On one hand what does it matter? When you get "low" on gasoline you have to fill up, one way or one time or another.
So whether I "push" it 20-30 or more miles further....or nearly immediately fill up, it doesn't really matter.
If I quickly fill up...it just means the fill up is going to cost me less. Only putting in 7-8 gallons of gas, is cheaper than putting in 9-91/2 gallons of gas.
So I don't think there is anything wrong with being as conservative as the warning light seems to be...outside of having to fill up that much sooner.

I do kind of wish The Fit had a slightly larger gas tank. But I realize that would be a significant design change.

 

I've only had my car get low enough for it to display "Low fuel" once since I've had the car and it did it when it had like 30 miles left lol

 

Pumpkin, if you then fill and check your gallons purchased and compare to the capacity, you will find that you probably had 2+ gallons left. That's closer to 80 miles.

Hence peoples complaints.

 

its like toilet paper.. you dont wait until you're like at the near end of the roll to prep your next roll.

just prepare to get some fuel soon when you see the light.

 

I don't worry too much because every Monday night after work, I often fill up my car.