Georgia Fiero Club Forum
All Things Fiero => General Fiero Discussion => Topic started by: MetalBlue85GT on March 26, 2013, 07:10:11 pm
-
Hello again:
I am back for a little discussion - This car runs out of gas Right on the empty line; and I mean right on it. So when my lil woman saves me with two gallons of gas and i drive it to the station it only took 6 before the pump started kicking off it got me thinking. there is something wrong with this gas tank. When i get to about 120 miles driven I am right about to the line, and then It will only take about 6 gallons. I was sure based on all the reading that I have a 10.3 Gallon tank just like the rest of the fiero owners.
So what action should I take here?
Buy a used tank and prep for a remove and reinstall? and then refurbish and sell my tank?
Pull my tank and live without the fiero until i get the tank prepped and ready to reinstall?
I dont have a lot of experience pulling tanks; I will have to learn alot im sure. On the planes I have worked on we just climbed into them to depuddle all of the remaining fuel before we repaired them - its only a little differnt right?
Just a thought any opinion is welcomed.
Randy
-
This isn't really an answer, but comparing notes. All the Fieros I have owned have taken a maximum of about 8.5 gallons. From what I understand...it is a 10.4 gallon tank, but there is about a gallon at the bottom that the pump can't get to, and there is about a gallon at the top that we can't fill. On the other hand, I have regularly put 25.5 gallons into my Silverado's 26 gallon tank.
Personally...if my Fiero started taking only 6 gallons instead, I would note the more limited range, and live with it until I had another reason to pull the tank.
-
to get 10.3 gal you have to fill it to the top of the filler neck, my 85GT is just like yours.. By the way the fuel pick up will not pick up all the fuel.. I drove mine once to see what the gage read when it ran out and I could only get 9.3 gal in it. Also your gas millage does'nt sound right, I get 26 in town and 31 on the highway and mine is a 2.8 also..
-
Jerry, isn't yours a manual? 4-speed? Randy's is an automatic. It's probably going to give 23-25 at best.
If you fill the tank to the top of the neck, you stand a chance of saturating the evaporative emissions canister. This can cause runability problems. Aerodonamic found that to be the reason his would stall out when going down the road and would restart after loosening and retightening the fuel filler cap.
You could go to a higher profile tire and improve your gas mileage to some degree, but with an automatic there's no way to compensate for the incorrect speedometer reading because you can't change the VSS gear. The benefit is that you'll be traveling further than what your odometer is telling you.
-
I will definitely stop 'topping it off' then, at first I thought it might be a venting issue with the car - Back pressure shutting the fuel pump off too early, but when I looked up how the gas pump works I decided otherwise. I pasted it at the end if you get curious. I liked this explanation best because it used Bernoulli.
Well I can say i feel lucky that my gauge works then because I pushhed it right after I got it and ran that car out of gas. I will start a new MPG thread - Like I mentioned I am getting a solid 20 and that is with a heavy foot on the weekends (I drive lighter during the commutes to work).
Randy
In a gas pump handle you have two valves: the main valve, which is actuated by the oversize trigger you squeeze to make the gas flow, and the check valve, which lets gas flow out but won't let anything back in again, thus reducing fire hazard. In the seat of the check valve you have a little hole. To the backside of this hole is connected a Y-shaped tube. One branch of this tube runs down the nozzle and exits at the tip while the other runs back to a diaphragm connected to a release mechanism on the main valve. When you squeeze the gas pump trigger, gas running past the hole in the check valve sucks air out of the Y-shaped tube. (This is because of the Bernoulli principle: a moving stream of fluid tends to pull things in from the sides. Take my word for it.) As long the end of the Y-shaped tube exiting at the spout is unobstructed, air is simply pulled into the tube and nothing much else happens. However, as soon as the gas in your car's fill-up pipe gets high enough to cover the end of the tube, a partial vacuum is created therein, which yanks on the diaphragm, releases the main valve, and shuts off the gas.
-
Lots of people don't run their car that low. I, as a matter of practice, only run my cars down to +/- 1/4 tank, even though they might have a low fuel warning. My Dodge truck has a 22 gallon tank and when the low fuel light comes on, it only requires about 17 gallon to refill. The Ford truck is about the same.
On a previous Grand Am, I ran it out of fuel just one time. It burned out the fuel pump. Same thing happened with my Dodge truck because the fuel is the cooling system for the pump. Too many times of running low will eventually require the pump to be replaced. In my case it only took once on each vehicle.
It's a popular misconception that running the last drop out of the tank will suck up all the trash in the bottom of the tank. Any trash or contaminants in the tank usually are in the bottom. So is the fuel pickup. It doesn't move up and down with the fuel level, but stays right down there in the bottom with all the trash. Even when the tank is full.
-
;D
The only time you can have too much fuel is when you're on fire.