What's the threshold for a digital fuel gauge to show a reading?
Asked by GuruDZ9KJP Nov 12, 2023 at 03:29 PM about the 2019 Volkswagen Jetta
Question type: Maintenance & Repair
Recently found myself on 0 (blinking) with a digital fuel tank gauge, luckily
made it to the station but even at the $4.50 mark it wouldn't reflect a reading
that I had put any fuel in the vehicle. It's a VW Jetta '19, is it standard for a
digital fuel tank to not report a reading until a certain threshold or was the gas
station pump skimming me or not in ordinance w/ state/city?
5 Answers
At current prices that’s barely a gallon of fuel, so I wouldn’t count on it to display that low.
If you left the ignition on during refueling the gauge might not update to the new fuel level for several minutes. By doing that the computer goes into "anti slosh mode". In the old days the gas gauge would move around sometimes while you were driving and that was normal. On today's vehicles that doesn't happen because there's a delay in updating the gauge on the dash. When you leave the ignition on during refueling the computer senses the rapid resistance change from the sending unit in the gas tank as the float rises quickly because of the fuel being added to the tank. The computer goes into the anti slosh mode which leaves the gas gauge where it was before the rapid change occurred. It will reset itself but it could take up to 45 minutes. Hope that helps! Jim
You should probably put more than a gallon of gas in your car if you're on empty.
Yep and then they wonder why the fuel pump burned up. I never run my vehicles with less than 1/4 tank.
