Date:         Wed, 05 Oct 94 22:07:26 CDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "J. Walker" <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      Re: *&^%@ gas gauge!!!

On Wed, 5 Oct 94 19:19:04 CDT David Carment said:
>Any way the point of this is that the Vanagon gas gauge is way off...the
>needle was hardly at the red point on the gauge when it died....and the gauge
>will read half empty after only 90 miles have gone by....what's up with that?
>How is it fixed......any ideas - DC

well ... as i see it, there are two ways to go about this:
1. get the bentley book, offer up a beer to the minor god of german electicity
   (bosch, by name), and starting poking and prodding with a VOM to see if
   any gremlins may be chased away by Curiosity and Karma.

2. get a 2nd fuel gauge. :)  this is what i did: a trip computer. which
   counts the clicks of one of the injectors (they also have a fuel line
   'meter' for carbureted folks) and tells you how much fuel you've used.
   when calibrated for my car, it tells me down to the 0.1 gallon (u.s.)
   how much is gone. also mpg and dist. AND it has a switch to allow me to
   choose u.s., metric, or Imperial measurements. oh, and it has a digital
   clock, too. ;)

as to the 360 miles per tank, boy, that's really stretching it for me. i'm
with David in his 250 miles around town and about 300 on the highway. i have
gone 380 on a trip once ... but it was almost bone-dry at the pump.

the odometer trick does, however, work. those of us old enough to remember
when buses and beetles had NO gas gauge (and, unfortunately, NO odometer!)
can relate to this. but some of us had to use that reserve lever under the
dash on the old beetles. :)  and hope that the Dreaded Previous Driver had
had sense enough to fill up after they flipped it ... no always the case. :(

gauges! hmph.

joel
we donn need no stinkin gauges!