I am now at 132 miles with a full tank. I have read on the forum that it should drop down at some point. Averaging 53 mpg, but know that it has to be down at least 2 bars in reality. Any ideas? Thanks!!
Sounds perfectly normal to me. I usually get to between 170 and 180 miles on a tank before I lose that first little bar. (Not all bars are created equally!!!)
Yeah, I'd say that was normal too. My last trip averaging 55 MPG my fuelbar was still showing full until I had 142 miles showing. I thought it might be from the warmer temps allowing the gas tank bladder to expand a bit more. I almost took the car into the Toyota dealer to have the gauge checked.
Discussed many times on PC. The bladder is quite variable. In warm weather, I average about 170 miles before I lose a bar on the fuel gauge. In the winter, I'm happy if I get to 80 miles before the 1st bar disappears. It's warming up in Pennsylvania, and the 1st bar has lasted much longer for me on the last two tanks than it did for the previous 5 months. Enjoy the variability, and have some fun trying to see how many miles you can get on the 1st bar with each tank of gas you purchase.
What everyone else said. On my current tank, I got almost 150 miles into it before the first pip disappeared. The first one always seems to stay around the longest.
My first one disappears usually a little over 100 miles, but it's variable. I've found what may be a correlation between how quickly the first one disappears and how many times the car is shut down and restarted (as opposed to driven a long distance continuously). The more restarts, the sooner the gauge starts to go down (but not related to MPG). Anyone else?
When the first bar goes off depends on your mpgs and how much fuel you managed to get into the tank the last time you filled it; 150 is quite normal.
I overfilled the tank and went 155 mi before the first bar disappeared. I was worried for a while thinking the overfilling might have done damage to the fuel gauge/sensor.
This is weird, I stumbled on this thread just now, my 2004 w/288,000 miles has the fuel gauge stuck, on full, then it will be stuck on 1/2, but it isn't reflecting the actual gas. I must say that I do have a bit of experience and I read the old posts in this thread, and I think they are ridiculous, 150 miles without moving? 100 miles without moving...of course this just my personal anecdotal experience, but no way has that happened to me, the bars have always, in the past 12 years moved in relative synchronicity with what is remaining in the gas tank...but that's just my personal experience, as they say YMMV. In any case, I wonder if there is anyone who has some knowledge/experience with the bars being "stuck", maybe at full, then when I start the next day, at 1/2, even if I fill up the tank (having kept track of the mileage, I know how many gallons I have. What to do? Repair shop pulled the dome fuse, didn't help but did put me back to default, now the reverse noise is back, the smart key function only opens the driver door, etc. Have to find how I re-programmed those things 11 1/2 years ago, isn't there a list of programming that we can do on the Prius 2? Somewhere? Thanks and Happy Holiday to whomever reads this and to those that are Prius lovers like me.
