How many miles is your ralliart getting when the red light comes on. I just took my car to the stealership cause my gas light comes on at when i've only driven 230 miles. Is that right they said there was nothing wrong with it.

 

My gas light comes on when my gas tank is almost at the E....I've never checked how many miles that was though. Is your needle down at the E when the light turns on? If so, then there's no problem. If not, then I think there might be something wrong.

 

what did stealersip say? It is not normal.....depends on the driving....it is still too early for the light to come on. Have u done any engine mods recently?

 

thats about right. your averaging about 19 mpg. sucks huh.

 

That's pretty normal if your driving a little aggresive now and then. My light comes one when I've only used 10 to 10.5 gallons. If yours is the same then I would say that you are getting 23 mpg. I'm not sure why they give you an extra 3 gallons of fuel after the light comes on but I guess it's because of all the idiots that don't know what "E" means and run out of gas. If you run the car out of gas enough times then your fuel pump will die.

 

It's completely stock and my girlfriend drives the car most of the time and I know she doesn't drive it hard. The dealership said there wasn't a problem with it. But i just find it hard after I drove for 1000 miles all highway on my way back from vacation and I still got the same gas mileage that I did when I was driving around town.

 

stop and go traffic sucks up more gas....ur always messin with the throttle and not just on it..

 

You can go quite a while after the gas light comes on. Ive gone up to about 70 miles. However on volkswagens when the light comes on youve got literally about 15 miles to find a gas station. When it starts beeiping at you, about 2 miles.

 

i get about 28 mpg. but i stay outta mivec most of the time. when the red light comes on for me i have about 280-290 on my tank. so if your on the throttle non stop smashing gears, yeah its gonna go down faster than just granny shifting it.

 

the sensors that run your fuel gauge and the one that turns on your low gas light work independantly. one is a variable resistor with a float (gauge) the other is either on or off, so one could not be properly functiuoning and the other one just fine. i have seen eclipses that had huge speaker set ups in the truks with big enough magnets to hold up the float arm and make it stay on f all the time lol. but to answer your question, yeah i think something might be wrong with one of the two sending units.

 

my car is bone stock and does the same thing his does. i get about 230 and the light comes on. i fill up and only put like 10-10.5 gallons in it. so i know the light is coming on really early. but i just fill up when it comes on anyway.

 

My mileage on my stock Sportback has been as high as 31mpg (all highway) and as low as 21 ( mostly city) I average about 24-25 mpg per tank, but I am on the highway a lot.

My Focus did better on fuel, but it was down about 30 hp to the Lancer. Ya gotta make trade-offs sometime. I drive about 3-5000 miles a month for business, so I wish the mileage was a bit better (27 city, 35 highway would be nice)

I don't think there's anything wrong with your car. Mileage ( especially if you keep using the MIVEC) isn't this engines strong suit.

 

Sounds like you have a lead foot. When I drive conservatively, I hit 300+ miles before the light comes on. Aggressively, I've had the light come on before 200 miles hit.

 

Yeah, no kidding. No need to go to the dealership... just fill it up when the light (white not red) goes on and calculate the mileage. If it's not what you would expect, learn how to not engage the aggressive MIVEC profile. If it sounds reasonable, use the amount of gallons you used and compare it to what you should have when the sensor engages. Considering you start with a full tank, thats 13.2 gallons - 3.2 gallons (high ball it just for the sake of the experiment) and you should have used up something around 10 gallons. You say 230 miles, meaning an average of 23 mpg if your gas light isn't messed up. This is completely reasonable, especially if you're not the one driving it most of the time. Now if you find out that you're using about 5 gallons before the light, that's a whole nother story heh. That's a pretty good sign that something's wrong. Either that or you're staying in 2nd and 3rd gear on major roads and freeways .

As a matter of fact, I just got about 230 to my last tank. That was a fun tank.

Well, sounds like you're fine. If you wanna figure out how to improve mileage, there's plenty of info on these boards and elsewhere on the internet.

 

There's two diff color lights? Never noticed!