When does the Gas mile counter goes to Zero?

[simple]

My range-to-zero hits zero when I have ~3 gallons of fuel left. I find it obnoxious, but it's life. Driving cross-country this summer, I occasionally pushed 40-50 miles past zero-miles-until-empty, without issue. Do some math yourself, though: Fill up the tank a couple times when your range-to-zero hits zero, and see how many gallons you put in, without topping off. Our 4Runners have a 23 gallon tank. If the pump stops at 20 gallons, you have 3 gallons left, like me. At 20mpg, that's ~60 miles.

I used to subscribe to this line of thinking, and to a point, still do. But not all that gas is useable gas. In a 23 gallon tank, 1 gallon may or may not be useable. Another interesting thought I never considered was someone was stating that they filled up their tank, the pump shut off, and they filled up over a gallon more. Which goes to show, just because you fill up 20.3 gallons, doesn't mean there's 2.7 gals chilling in the tank. The evap kicks off when the evap kicks off and I don't know the science of when it's supposed to do that.

 

[blakjack23]

I'm no expert, but I feel like the whole "will suck up debris when its low" started a long time ago and really doesn't apply anymore. Maybe it's just me, but I don't know anybody in the last 20 years who has said they had car issues because they ran low on gas and sucked up some debris that was in the bottom of the tank. Maybe others have had this happen to them?

 

[Natey]

The pickup has a filter on it. Nothing will get sucked up, but that filter can/will get dirty, which can lead to bad things like crappy mileage, etc.


I noticed that when I'm parked on a hill with less that 1/4 tank, my gas level goes way down. If you hop in your car, it says 0 miles and you're nose down on a hill, I'll bet it's not as empty as it appears.

 

[diverscale]

To reply to op's question, I've gone well over 50 miles after the counter (not the light) hit 0 quite a few times. It's not like the truck is gonna stall at 0.