This thread is regarding my 82 4x4 and/or other yotas that have this same issue. I filled the tank, drove around and l let the fuel gauge get to E I mean dead nuts E, as in beyond the line, way beyond the line. I then got out a 17mm socket and unscrewed the bolt on the fuel tank to drain it. I'll be damned but there were 5 gallons remaining in that tank. I measured every drop.
SO, what is going on here. Either the engineers at Toyota designed this system to give you a good 100 miles more should you be on dead nuts E or there is a fuel gauge or sender issue. Either way I need a little help on this one.

 

Mine goes to E then I drive 20 miles it goes back to the top of E and I can drive another 30 or so miles til it runs out of gas I tried this one day with a spare couple gallons in the back to see what my over all fuel capacity was

 

my 85 4runner fuel gauge bounces around like im racing on whoop-de-doos, im not sure if I have a low fuel light ether

 

Mine runs out before the E, but I'm sure that has to do with the custom hump in my tank courtesy of a huge freakin rock.

 

I did the same thing yesterday with 3 gallons of spare gas in a can. I COULD not get the thing to run out. I drove another 90 miles and it would not run out and it was on E when I set the OD back to 0 I was like DAMN what is going on here. I finally had to put some gas in it today because I was headed into town and I didn't want to run out in the middle of the street.
I have no idea what is going on with this truck. I think I might switch out the gauge and see what happens.

 

Does anyone have a reasonably accurate idea of how much gas you have in the tank after the needle bottoms out at E. There has to be some average.

 

Same deal with my truck. Sometimes its empty, sometimes half full. I just go by the fuel warning light. When it comes on and stays on ive got about 20-30 more miles to go to refuel. Idk, maybe the gauge no worky? It is 24+ years old.. Also, check the wiring. I belive there was a writeup here saying that a faulty gauge signal was due to corroded wiring. They guy soldered new wire in and it wad working as good as new

 

82 project truck "Mascot" had a squirrely gas gauge. It only seemed to read correctly when over half full. After that it was a guess. It acted good sometimes, crazy at others like the float was stuck.

:wabbit2:

 

Mine was fine till I went to a rockcrawl event and bounced around up and over a few rocks now I fill it to the brim and I only register 3/4 tank, checked to see if there were any dents in the tank, but no everythings fine. So whats up?

 

In my 86 runner the gauge would only work for the first half of the tank then it would read empty

 

My 86 4Runner does the exact same thing.

 

My 89 pickup only reads Full or Empty. It registers full until I hit about half a tank then goes to E. Since the guage is toast I've had to manually track my fuel usage. At about 150 miles I refill and have about a gallon or two left depending on how aggressively I've been driving.

OP keep us posted on what you find. Nice av by the way, vis way way north is usually about to the end of my arm so I'm guessing thats in mx?

 

My '85 did that when I first bought it. Turned out to be a defective lever sender in the tank. Probably failed due to PO installing a new battery backwards.

 

Mine likes to work at full, then it'll drop down after a bit of driving, then plummet. I fill up when my gas light comes on.

 

I wish I had a gas light on my 85 4runner , so I could do that