After making myself comfortable in front of the TV I suddenly realised that I had to go to work to drop something off. Jumped out of the seat, into the car and then nothing. The engine kept turning over but would not start.
Almost laughing at the fact my 6000mile S60 is not starting (A bit of a pattern in my car buying history) I start to wonder if I had run out of petrol. Surely not, the light only came on about half a mile way from my house last night.
The RAC chap arrives, pours in some petrol and hey presto, the engine comes back to life! How can the red light possibly leave half a mile left in the tank before coming on?? I expected a good 50 miles although 20 would have been plenty, but 0.5!!
Having only had the car a week I did have a sneaky suspicion that the red line wasn't particularly generous, but not that tight fisted.
Is this a feature of Volvo's or is something not quite right?
Cheers
Stuart
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"The RAC chap arrives.."
At least he didn't try to sell you a battery! (see Breakdown Services thread).
Most gauges/lights in my experience give you about a gallon when the light/red zone appears, although my old Peugeot had one that came on with at least 2 gallons left, with the result that it always got ignored! It's a difficult thing to know without your sort of experience - I'm not sure that modern high-pressure injection pumps like being run dry much, either.
Don't know about Volvos, I'm afraid, but yours does sound a bit mean...
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Hmm...get your Volvo dealer to check it - try not to fill the tank up before dropping it off though!
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Your manual should tell you roughly what to expect from the reserve tank. My old Tipo was supposed to be 7-8l - in fact it was more like 15 or 20. Even my Yaris has a good 10l left by the time the last segment starts flashing on the gauge.
The only possibility is if you had been doing a long journey previously, especially if you were throwing it around a bit. This can splash petrol up over the sensor (or so it seemed from the Tipo) and give a false reading, but I'd be surprised if it was this bad.
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I'm sure that my fuel tank is an inverted cone.
It takes about 200 miles for it to drop from full to half. Another 50 miles and it's into the red. I'm not sure that I could stand the ribbing if I ran out of fuel so I always start looking to fill up when it gets below half.
Kevin...
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Ditto Kevin, I am sure that my fuel indicator drops slower the lower it gets. Hmm, that's rather badly expressed isn't it? ;-)
However, ever since I ran out of fuel once (about 30 seconds before joining a motorway!) I'm paranoid about it and never let it get near the red.
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Sounds like something is stuck, but it seems a bit soon in a car's life for this to happen. SWMBO ran out once in the diesel - the gauge was showing OK, but the float in the tank had stuck due to an accumulation of fine grit.
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You know what this means Stuart.
It's punishment for choosing to buy the S60 instead of the Omega. Having had your previous Omega, you've got used to the 50 or so miles left after the light comes on :o)
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You weren't parked on a slope were you? If the feed is at one end of the tank and your last gallon has slopped to the other end you would get the problem you describe.
No Dosh
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How can the redlight possibly leave half a mile left in the tank before coming on??
At least you've got a red light.
My car hasn't got any sort of low fuel warning that i'm aware of so i have to kep my eye on the guage. I'm pretty sure there's no warning because i know i can get an average week of travel from a full tank of petrol but, I remember one week knowing i was going to fill up on the Friday evening after work and my guage went right down, into the red and actually past the red into the white by the time i got to the petrol station and at no point whatsoever did i get any extra warning that my car was about dry up. I did an awful lot of praying that day;o)
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Take a look at www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/tsb/ for Technical Service Bulletins - there's something there about Volvo fuel gauge not being accurate - check to see if it's for your model & year. It's a US site but it may help...
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its not only the fuel guage that is not that accurate on the volvo V40 I drive(when tank full the fuel guage reads under the full mark),the average fuel consumption reads approx 4MPG high, the speedometer reads approx 8% high the list is does not end here.
As a rule i do not let the indicated fuel level drop below quarter full,just in case.
chris
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