Fuel Gauge

Yeah, so I put about 125 km on the car so far (still a baby), but my fuel gauge only JUST moved down a single bar.

Anybody here have inaccuracies with the fuel gauge? I am showing 504km remaining on the tank... so I don't think something is calculating correctly.
Is this just the new car breaking in?

That sounds right. Hell in my S10 I can get 600Km to a tank. (125Km would barely move the needle)

I think you're fine... on mine it seems to take forever to go from full to 3/4, but then going from 1/2 to 1/4 happens relatively quickly.

Come to think of it, all my previous cars' fuel gauges did that.

That's a pretty common design, for the top and bottom quarters of the tank to be scaled down on the gauge as compared to the middle chunk... helps people notice when they're running low more easily, and gives you plenty of time with the needle saying "umm dude, c'mon!!!" before you actually run out of gas.

I guess it's less of an issue with the "You have X amount of Kms till empty". I am definately just looking for things to be wrong with the new car. MAX Mazda, an ICQ number... seriously? That's still around? heh

i can easily get up to 650KM or more if its all highway

Mine routinely reads a range of anywhere between 560 to 622 KM per tank when I first fill up. I can go about 100KM before the bars start to go down as well. I hardly ever do highway driving, rarely get about 100KM/Hr most days, and average anywhere from 25-40KM total distance in a day (lots of short trips.)

I was getting pretty good mileage up till Christmas, and then it's a lot of warming up, deicing, and sitting in slow traffic due to our huge snowfall (less than 1.5 cm) in the Vancouver area, it should improve as the temps warm up. I too notice that from about half to a quarter it goes quite fast. The last quarter goes fast, but I've always had room for at least 10-12 more litres of gas, even when the computer is telling me that my range is down to 40-60Km. Some people have posted here that they can go quite a ways even after the range reads zero, so perhaps Mazda has put in a bit of margin so that you don't completely get stranded out of gas somewhere.

Bcdad182 said:

Some people have posted here that they can go quite a ways even after the range reads zero, so perhaps Mazda has put in a bit of margin so that you don't completely get stranded out of gas somewhere.

Click to expand...

That's a pretty standard practice, at least for cars sold in the domestic market. In most vehicles, the 0 til empty (like the low fuel light) hits when there's about 10% of capacity left in the tank to give the driver plenty of time to fuel up... better to be fooled that you have a bit less range than you do than burn out a fuel pump.

As for 125km before moving a single bar... maybe they just really topped it off for you?? I know on my MZ3 it takes about 45miles before the analog needle gets from above down to level with the "F" mark on a full tank (without topping off).