Fuel Gauge

[APS]

Hi There,

Just a quick poll to see if anyone else have seen the following behaviour...

Car: 02 Corolla Tspirit D4D (with Optitron instruments)

Symptom: Fuel gauge reading has been working fine for about 27000 miles now but recently it has started to change reading during journeys. Very often I find that the reading is lower when I take the car than when I left it. It's as if some fuel had leaked out while standing (this is not the case though). After driving say 30 miles the reading may go up slighltly and then go down again. Generally though the needle seems to go down quicker than normal. Since I do a lot of mileage every day I have a very good idea of how much is left after a certain distance and what the fuel gauge should read.

Fuel consumption has not changed so I conclude that there must be something wrong with either the gauge itself or more likely the sender unit in the fuel tank.

Anyone else experienced this??

[runboy]

I think mine stays at the top end after a full fill-up, then drops suddenly. You think "hey, doing all these miles and the needle doesn't drop" then wham, it drops down to 3/4 in no time.......

[APS]

Runboy: I think mine stays at the top end after a full fill-up, then drops suddenly. You think "hey, doing all these miles and the needle doesn't drop" then wham, it drops down to 3/4 in no time.......

I know what you mean mine does this as well. It also used to 'pause' just above half tank then drop.

I think I should clarify my original posting.

What I seem to notice is that the fuel gauge is just lower than it used to. For instance when the tank is absolutely full it used to point at the second 1 character where it says '1/1' (eg. slightly above the top mark). Now, when I fill up, the needle just points at the full mark/line, not above it. It just seems like the reading is overall lower. However occasionally the needle goes up and indicate the level I would expect - this is what I meant by the irratic behaviour. It's almost as if the floating device in the tank is lower than usual.

I will monitor this further and see is the low fuel warning light also comes on earlier than normal. Normally it comes on when there's about 12-13 litres left.

Any comments please feel free...

Cheers!