Ok, will try to keep it short here. Sorry if I ramble too much. I live in southern AZ and commute about 80 miles each way to work. About half is interstate and the rest of 2 lane state highway. Lifetime MPG is 47.7 (MFD) and about 46 (calculated). Best tank was about 53mpg. Leaving work 2 days ago I stop for gas. I start the fill and head into the store for a soda. The line inside is long and I end up not getting back to the car for 10-15 minutes. I walk back to my Pri expecting the pump to have shut off only to find that it is still filling up. It ends up that for whatever reason the flow out of the pump is very slow, maybe 1/5th of the normal output. At this point I am only up to around 6 gallons on the fill so I sit back and wait for it to finish. After around 9 gallons I start to worry about overfill and remove the hose. No gas squirted out of the tank, but you could see it settle about 2 inches from the top of the pipe. I am kinda bummed that it worked out this way, and assume that it will jack with my mileage, but what's done is done. In the past I have been very good to only fill the tank to the cutoff and not over fill. So I end up driving home, back to work yesterday and then finally on the way home last night the gauge falls down to 9 pips. The trip odometer is at 221 miles. Fast forward to this morning and I am now at about 320 miles and 6 pips. Any chance that there is some form of damage to the bladder or fuel gauge as a result of the unintended overfill? Sorry again about the length T
Slow response....I double posted. Oops. Remember the tank fuel remaining and pips remaining do not have a linear relationship.
I've gotten over 300 miles on the first pip before. The thing that probably helps is the fact that you said the pump was pumping really slow. In that case, the fuel level probably never reached the cut-off point for the pump. Gotta love the higher FE from warmer weather.
Hi Tango, The fuel gauge is a guide and as documented by many on PC it is not linear. In my one year ownership I've found that the gauge can be very inconsistent in showing fuel consumption and what supposedly is left in the tank. Not sure if an overfill (or near one) would cause it to go out of wack, but watch the next couple of fill-ups and see if this condition persists. If yes there is a thread on PC explaining how you can reset it or take it to the dealer. Good luck, Gabe
Cool, thanks for the replies. I was pretty sure that it was just the gauge acting strange, but given that for the most part I am still a new owner (3 months), I wanted to check here and get some feedback. I will say that with the temps now in the 80's I have been making it a pretty steady 3 days away from the pumps T
I've never filled my tank past 7 gallons. Everytime I fill up, I always have at least 2 pips left. Now that we are in the warming trend, I may see more than 7 gallons go in the tank pretty soon. I think these bladders need to stretch a little bit.
