To-day the fuel light came on even though the range told me 77 miles to go. MY car is a 1.2 sport. Anyone else have this happen to them?

Is the computer not very accurate?

I filled the car up and it took £29.00 which going by the fuel tank capacity means I should have around 5 litres left.

I can get nearly 90 miles in my punto with light on...its just a reminder to fuel up ...like before you join the M6

roadster1_98 said:

To-day the fuel light came on even though the range told me 77 miles to go. MY car is a 1.2 sport. Anyone else have this happen to them?

Is the computer not very accurate?

I filled the car up and it took £29.00 which going by the fuel tank capacity means I should have around 5 litres left.

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Reserve is 5 litres so thats about right. I dont worry about the fuel level until it stops giving a range. In the punto used to say had 30miles then would go to no range so would fill up

Cento is similar. Suddenly it will go from around 30 miles range to three bars of nothingness. I've done another 35 miles after that point to reach a filling station, and it wasn't empty at that point.

I'm sure the OP would actually like the warning early, rather than sitting on the hard shoulder within 30 seconds of the light coming on!!

Cheers

D

Mine's back to the dealer tomorrow morning because for the past 3 days the fuel guage has been dissappearing and the low warning light appearing on half a tank of petrol! It builds back up again in a few seconds to a minute, then does it again - driving me mental!

better for it to come on at 77 miles to go, than 10 miles when next petrol station is 44 miles away

petrol is going up to

sheeno said:

Mine's back to the dealer tomorrow morning because for the past 3 days the fuel guage has been dissappearing and the low warning light appearing on half a tank of petrol! It builds back up again in a few seconds to a minute, then does it again - driving me mental!

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Wife's been having identical problems of oscillating fuel indications...and does a lot of short journeys - it's a "city car"!. Dealer had no idea when phoned - has the battery trickle charge helped and do you think the drain from the daylight running lights exacerbates the discharge?

sheeno said:

Mine's back to the dealer tomorrow morning because for the past 3 days the fuel guage has been dissappearing and the low warning light appearing on half a tank of petrol! It builds back up again in a few seconds to a minute, then does it again - driving me mental!

Click to expand...

Mines been doing the same and even had the voice telling me warning low fuel the range gauge telling me I have no miles left, them a few minutes later it has crept back up to where it was! I have it booked in for a proxy alignment which should sort it out ......hopefully! pretty scary when it first happened tho!

I know I'm safe with my fuel light on for about 70 miles, had the guage reading below 0 before, that was a wallet punching fill up!

People don't see to realise that a fuel guage can only be call reasonable accurate when the car has been stationarry for a minute or two when the fuel in the tank has stopped moving about. Sometimes when I go over bumps the guage goes all over the place!

Jon.

Mine comes on about 68miles to go, i got to 0 miles to go other week and the lady was telling me loads that i had no fuel.

I had to roll to the petrol station as i tried 2 and they were closed for refueling this was late at night.

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Took Bibi in to the dealer today to get the fuel gauge thing sorted and apparantly its a faulty connection which means to fix it they have to take off the whole steering column to get to it, so its got to go in again next week as they didnt have the bits!! letting me have a courtesy car overnight either a 500 or a punto!!!.anyone else had this problem with the fuel gauge having a mind of its own??

slimgimli said:

Took Bibi in to the dealer today to get the fuel gauge thing sorted and apparantly its a faulty connection which means to fix it they have to take off the whole steering column to get to it, so its got to go in again next week as they didnt have the bits!! letting me have a courtesy car overnight either a 500 or a punto!!!.anyone else had this problem with the fuel gauge having a mind of its own??

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Had mine into the dealer today, for a bout of head scratching about the elastic fuel gauge. No fault found; proxy alignment performed but fault still present. The FIAT service system has no tips so your "faulty connection" in the steering wheel is a glimmer of hope for us all...and FIAT! Hope it fixes it - I shall go back to the dealer soonest with the same suggestion.

I dont seem to be the only one then!
someone else has had the same problem but with a different outcome.........

'''Took mine to the dealer and they did the diagnostics - only thing was a battery under charged. Left it overnight for them to charge and had no probs since!
Actually, the receptionist at the garage said hers had done the same thing'''

Wondering whether to ring the dealer and see what they say to the above solution before poor Bibi is taken apart, trouble is I'm no technic and dont want to sound as if they dont know what they are on about.....is LITTLE PIP about?? You always seem to know the answer

I am beginning to think that the charging circuit on the 500 is pretty marginal. My fuel gauge also gives inconsistent readings, and will in fact drop a whole segment between switching the engine off and switching it on again. I also had the battery go completely flat on me and refuse to start the engine, just because I used one of those little car vacs from the 12V socket for no more than 10 mins. However, seeing that the alternator will happily run the whole electrical show while you are driving along might point to a batch of duff batteries rather than a low charging rate.

John

Ten minutes drawing power with a vacuum is quite a long time isn't it.
Wouldn't it be better to leave the engine running when doing this, or go to a filling station and use theirs?

But it does seem like a duff battery, because any new car should burst into life with just a hint of starter, and the ancillaries shouldn't use too much power. However, running with the wipers and lights on all the time, plus the A/C and the radio, as I do in winter, must increase the load and battery stress, especially with short journeys.

But not in a new car so quickly.

Yes, now when I use my little vac I have the engine running. However, it is rated at only 50W, so no more load than one headlamp on. I would have thought the battery should handle that OK, all my previous cars have. Incidentally, when the battery ran down, it wasn't just the fuel gauge that went strange - the whole electrical system went crazy. I had warning messages about everything flashing up - everything except what was actually wrong. Two hours charging sorted things.

John

Already been through the battery charging routine, based on this forum, with no success. The dealer checked as well and confirmed the battery condition was OK. Did say that batteries were a problem across the FIAT range.

Mechanic suggested that perhaps the fuel tank float could be sticking but I can't associate my bouts of fuel gauge fluctuations with abnormal road conditions, cornering or inclines.

Mmmmmm! well in that case I think I will let them take Bibi apart and see if that fixes it! She's in on wednesday and will be picking her up on thursday evening so will let you know what they say then!

Two days of investigations at the dealers proved that the fuel gauge fluctuations could be made repeatable! Not 100% sure of the exact cause but apparently an "iffy" connection (or connections) on the fuel pump was the culprit. Hopefully this will be fed back to FIAT for a service bulletin and others suffering the same symptom will get a quick cure. One other symptom was a flashing odometer.

Standby this page for "" when it happens again!