djslinkyz

and i know the bulb isn't out. i ran the gas all the way down to the line and it wouldn't come on.

Brian_TII

When you ran the gas down to the line, how much fuel did it take to fill it back up? You may need to pull the sending unit out of the tank and test it with a multimeter.

Walka

even though its a handy feature, ive heard that its not good to drive to the point where the gas is that low.. something about settiments or something in the gasoline .... i dunno, can anyone verify this?

walka

Brian_TII

I do think it is bad to run REALLY low on fuel (gallon or less), but I don't think for a second that going to the fuel light is bad. Basically if you look at the bottom of a fuel tank, all the sediament is at the bottom anyway and the fuel pump doesn't move at all... it sucks from the bottom all the time. It has a filter on the pick up tube, and I've never seen an in tank filter that was all that dirty. I don't really see a big difference between a full tank and 1/8 of a tank. Some people will argue that the reason for keeping a full tank would be to keep the fuel pump cool... which to some extent may make sense, but realistically the fuel pump is pumping the fuel through it on it's way to the motor, so I would think that the fuel flow through the pump would be suffient to keep the pump plenty cool.

Just my $0.02,

Walka

exactly the kind of explanation i was looking for, thanks


walka

djslinkyz

about 14 gallons

Brian_TII

Hmm... when mine starts coming on my car will take ~13.5 gallons. So I would THINK that you should be low enough to trigger it. Honestly the place that I would start would probably be the sender in the tank, and make certian that signal is correct out of the tank. (Probably open circuit when light should be off, and closed circuit when light should be on) I honestly don't even know how to access the fuel pump on the Maxima, so I can't say rather it's worth the trouble or not to figure it out. Basically if you do want to try to fix it, I would just take it apart and start using a multimeter to try and figure out what everything does... then figure out why it's not working. Pretty vague, I know... but I haven't ever had to deal with those items on the Maxima. My fuel gauge has "issues", but I just set the trip meter and go off of that... also my fuel light still works fine... so I don't worry about the gas gauge. :-)

Take care / good luck,

Also if you have any questions about what I'm talking about feel free to ask.

Brian Murray
87 RX-7 Turbo II (w/mods)
89 Maxima (daily)

Neice Anne

Your light comes on at 13.5?! Crazy... I have the same problem as djslnkyz my fuel light won't come on, but I can tell you that the tank holds 18 gallons (My car ran out of gas a couple of weeks ago) On a related note, does anyone know why I would all of a sudden lose gas mileage significantly? I put on a straight pipe, and a CAI, those are the only things I did and I dunno if they caused this but 2 tanks ago I got 330 on 17 gallons (Thus 350 on 18 if you do the math) then last tank I ran out of gas at 313! NOW I'm at half way on my new tank and the mileage counter says 114! At my current pace I'll run dry at 228! Anyone help me out? I'm quite distressed!

djslinkyz

that's pretty weird... if i have about 120 at the halfway mark, i'm happy. and it always seems that the first half of the tank goes by pretty fast, and the 2nd half is where i make up for it all.

another thing that's weird is i usually wait until there's about 1/8 of the tank left before i get gas, and the pump stops between 12-14 gallons. i never get anywhere close to 17 or 18 gallons. even the time i ran the gauge the way down to the empty line, i filled up 13.83 gallons.

Neice Anne

Hmm, that's definetely odd. Do you manually fill it or just use the little autofiller thing? When you fill up does it go all the way to the top on the meter? At least with me, it really sucks that my gas light doesn't work because mine goes to empty way before I'm really empty it seems like... I remember when I went 330, my meter showed me at empty at like 250 or so, and I just ignored it figuring my light would come on when I was really low... I guess I just got lucky that time.. anyway from now on I'm just gonna fill it when it first hits empty, even though I'll prolly still ahve like 6 or 7 gallons left!

djslinkyz

i use the autofiller thing so i can go back inside my car and listen to music while it pumps. and yes it goes all the way to the top on th meter. in fact, it goes a little above, and sometimes it takes about 20-30 miles before it starts going down.

Neice Anne

Well if it goes to the top, I guess it's all good... but next time just try manually doing it after the autostop thing. I know for a fact that all 3rd gens have an 18 gal fuel tank capacity..