When I bought my 05 HAH I was bewildered when I filled it up from empty. It just took 12 Gals! I had read that the tank capacity was 17+ gals in the manual. Being a chicken about running out of gas, I have many miles and never pushed the issue to find out what it really is. I finally ran it until the indicator cale on and it only took 13 gals!

Is there another indicator that shows when you you are getting close to the limit? I figure I still had anothe 120 miles on the remaining 4 gals left in the tank, but do not understand why Honda missed-calebrated the fuel guage so badly! What were they thinking?!

I really do not want to find out the hard way. Should I ask Honda to recalebrate the guage, or what!!!?

Thanks, Dave

 

I drove 610 miles once. The needle was below the red line and pointing to the top of the E. And I filled up with just over 15 gallons.





I didn't get a pic of the dash before filling up. But here's what it looked like when my low fuel light first came on.





And here's the dash just after filling up and before resetting the trip meter.





So, I went another 56 miles after my low fuel light came on. I know that doesn't give you a good indication of when YOU'LL run out of fuel. But know that when the low fuel light comes on, you've still got a little ways to go. I just wouldn't push it.

 

Doesn't sound like Honda has changed their "reserve capacity" much over the years. I had a '83 Accord LX that I often would go 80 to 100 miles after the low fuel light came on! Yes I pushed it a bit, but on freeway trips I got 40 - 42mpg like clockwork on that Accord. I figured I had at least 3 gallons left when the low fuel light came on.

 

Thanks for your posts! Do Honda engineers ever read this forum?

I think that with all the fuel usage monitoring on-board the Accord to report MPG, they should be able to display an accurate fuel guage, to get the best mileage from a tank of gas - without running the risk of having to walk to get more!

Dave

 

That is in line with how my '02 Accord performed. I think the tank was rated at 17.1gal, i don't think I ever put more than ~14 gallons into it after the light came on.

 

Because of the mechanics of how a typical fuel guage sending unit works, (a float in the tank), it will always be inaccurate at both extremes of measuring a tank volume.

For example:

Full tank. The top of the float is pinned against the upper part of the tank and doesn't move until some portion of the tank is burned off. The guage thus reads full longer than is real.

Empty tank. The bottom of the float comes to rest against the lower surface of the tank and cannot move further even though there is still fuel in the tank to burn. The guage therefore reads empty but you still have gas.

howstuffworks.com has a good demo of this.

 

Wow that site is cool. I wish they had an article on how chalk works though