Morris Minor Owners Club

Just out of interest, not sure if my fuel gauge is working....


If I put £10 in, it says half full..... Is this about right?


I've fitted a new fuel gauge sender unit in the last year.


Cheers!

a 1969 minor will have a 6.5 gal tank (approx 28 litres).

it normally costs me about £35 to fill up.

Trouble with minors seems to be that 1/2 on the gauge doesn't mean half a tank. i often find that the first half on the gauge takes ages to get down, and the second half on the gauge goes really quickly.

So it's possible that your 'half' on the gauge is only a third in real life. In which case £10 is about right.

Also, you can run on empty for quite a while, so if you're filling up as soon as you touch the E then it won't take as much to get it to half.

Bitter experience has shown me that when my needle is at empty, I have about 12-15 miles left, which isn't much on a dual carraigeway!
Like you I find the gauge slow down to 1/2 tank, then drops quickly to empty. 26-27 litres from empty mark to brim full!

linearaudio wrote:Bitter experience has shown me that when my needle is at empty, I have about 12-15 miles left, which isn't much on a dual carraigeway!
Like you I find the gauge slow down to 1/2 tank, then drops quickly to empty. 26-27 litres from empty mark to brim full!

Bitter experience has shown me that when my needle hits empty I have to coast onto the side of the road and call the AA! My gauge seems pretty accurate although it does move around as the fuel sloshes in the tank. Obviously it doesn't move around much when there's not much fuel left. I now carry a plastic can in the car, which ironically seems to remind me to fill up long before I reach empty.

I wouldn't trust the fuel gauge as anything more than a 'you need to fill up sometime soon' indicator. A full tank costs about £35, so £10 for a genuine half a tank is unlikely, although the gauge may well tell you this. Bear in mind that there will probably still be some fuel in the tank when the gauge reads empty - mine seems to have almost a gallon left when it's on the 'E' line.

hmm mine only takes 21l before spilling on my shoes...........

Well, Missouri's current average price for a gallon is $3.11. On a 6.5 gallon tank, that's $20.22, or £12.94.
But the United States has been through a LOT to keep the price of gasoline low..........

Bear in mind that Imperial gallons are a bit bigger than US gallons (about 4.54 litres, as opposed to 3.8ish), so a late Minor tank will be ~7.75 US gallons. Still less than $25 to fill it up though! That's unless you've already converted the price of the fuel to imperial gallons, of course.

Ah, right, no I hadn't. Should've done metric, it's a simpler standard for this sort of thing. However -- I actually have yet to fill Mog's tank -- that'll be coming up soon!

I agree with Chris, I find about £28 when I fill up and then it goes over my shoes! I miss the old large dial petrol pumps with someone filling the car up for me! This was until 1991......Regal motors, how I miss them!

mbo145 wrote:I agree with Chris, I find about £28 when I fill up and then it goes over my shoes!

The earlier cars had a smaller tank, they only hold 5 gallons.

this is where I will start keeping a log of fuel ups, last one cost £27.93 and when I next fill her up it will tell me the MPG
http://www.fuelly.com/driver/fossy97/minor

oh and 5 Imperial gallons = 22.7304594 litres so im guessing that some one has fitted an earlier tank.

you might not have a small tank, you could just be not empty! if you're filling up when the gauge says E, you might still have a few litres (or gallons) left in the tank. the only way to truly tell is to run it dry, with a fuel can in the boot ofcourse.

i tried that in Bluey, and did 224 miles before running out. that's only 34mpg

Only trouble with running it dry is that you get all the crud that's in the bottom of the tank blocking the pump.

i've never really understood the logic behind that.

if the pickup pipe is always at the bottom of the tank (which it must be or it wouldn't get any fuel to it after a while) then surely it's always 'picking up from the bottom of the tank'.

if the pickup is just above the bottom of the tank (to avoid picking up crud) then when the fuel level gets below that line, it'll run out of petrol, and not pick up the crud at the bottom...

Exactly - it's a(nother) myth.....

it costs whatever the price of petrol is its only 6.5 gallons max

It's just another facet of the character of the car.
There is a good line in a film, a western I think "When you get old, you get colourful"
It applies to cars as well as humans!

You get to know a Minor, it isn't the same as anyone else's.

Don't forget Chris that as the fuel gets low in the tank the crud at the bottom can be 'washed' in with the movement of the car splashing around. It's not wise to get so low; also condensation in an empty tank can give problems!

When mine gets to empty you can tell that it is running out as the engine starts to run rougher, stuttering slightly.