Gas Tank Question

[nzwasp]

I have both a nissan sentra and a nissan xterra and I've noticed this problem with both.

The light to say its empty comes on a good 10L before the tank is officially out of gas. So i'm never using anywhere close to the true amount of gas in the car. With my Xterra the light comes on at about 18L before the tank is empty (80L maximum). Also the Xterra has the DTE (distance to empty) that tells me 50Km to go when I've used about 60L.

Are all cars designed to have a reserve tank of 10 to 15L of fuel, is it safe to run them until theres very little left? and do you do much damage if the tank does run dry?

[G-ZUS]

Originally posted by nzwasp
Are all cars designed to have a reserve tank of 10 to 15L of fuel, is it safe to run them until theres very little left? and do you do much damage if the tank does run dry?

All cars have reserve tanks but not sure if all are same amout. Why would you want to run them dry? It's going to cost you the same in fuel either way. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but you have a higher chance of wrecking your fuel fump or clogging your fuel filter by running it low or dry.

[Tik-Tok]

Originally posted by G-ZUS

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but you have a higher chance of wrecking your fuel fump or clogging your fuel filter by running it low or dry.

That, plus your injectors. They need the fuel as lubrication.

[J-hop]

The light comes on early to warn you to gas up soon. If the light came on near the actual zero fill you'd have a lot more people on the side of the road with Jerry cans and a thumbs up.

You should never be running your tank that low though. It is not good for your fuel pump and there is absolutely no reason to be doing that so I don't know why you want to???

[speedog]

In reality, most trucks/cars do not have a reserve tank unless it was like my Dad's 1973 Ford F250 that had two tanks that you could manually switch between. Now my two Yamaha motorcycles from the 80's had a manual reserve switch, but I believe all that did was change the pick-up point for the fuel pump in the tank as both bikes only had one fuel tank. What most trucks/cars have instead is a low fuel warning light that comes on and by that point you're probably good for about an hour's worth of normal driving or at least that's what all my vehicles seem to be good for when the low fuel light comes on - for sure, there is no reserve tank.