My gas gauge is kind of screwy on my "New" 2006 Prius. getting an empty tank light at about 200 miles. Not exactly 200 but about. I need to find a level surface to try to reset the gauge but have not been able to yet. What I have been doing is driving 350 miles, which should give me a comfort zone, and putting in just over 7.5 gallons. Seems to work for now. Done it twice now. I checked the distance between the gas station I went to and home and it is 11.2 miles. My distance gauge that resets itself when you refill shows 11 miles so seems pretty accurate because Google maps shows 11.2 miles. I have read that the sensor in the tank is a crazy job and really expensive if it comes down to it? Second question related. Gas gauge is showing 41.8 mpg and got up to 42.2 on a recent trip. A little low. I did a calculation and got between 44.3 to 44.4 mpg by dividing distance traveled by the amount of gas. . That seems a half decent MPG for winter and that I have been driving shorter distances with more up and down hills than before. Anything that could be throwing off the mpg reading? I have plans to clean the MAF sensor later this week
I know it has one but I know that even though the gas gauge shows empty at what would be 4 or 5 gallons burned, I can still put a couple of additional gallons of gas in the tank. So the bladder cannot have contracted to the point where there are only 5 gallons in the tank.
