Quattro Fuel tanks

Jun 06, 2006 29 Replies

I was recently curious as to how far my car would travel when the fuel guage and digi readout showed 0 miles left, I was concered after noticing the guage went down quite fast by putting in smaller amounts of fuel example £15.00 roughly 3 gallons.



So I filled up and let the car bleep as it does at approx 60 miles left and the needle was approaching the red line and carried on driving, I had a can of fuel in the boot for safty sake and reset the mileometer when i hit 0 on the digi readout.



This is where it gets interesting, normally I would expect a reserve of say



1 gallon max usually less from the point the needle shows red and the cars shows 0, but my car is still driving fine 90 miles later, I will let it get too 100 miles and see what happens, but was interested to hear from anyone with the quattro twin tank design on a B6 1.8T or 3.0 A4, mine is a 2002 model.

It seems the guage is not really faulty as it may be reading low fuel from one tank but the other tank is still supplying the fuel? I do not know...



Any thought?



BTW the guage and car are working perfect, and I am getting very healthy MPG



40mpg+ I was just curious. :)

Jeremy Clarkson did an interesting test with this in an Audi (A6?). I forget the results but he did go for what seemed like a long time after it read 0 miles.

I suspect it's just calibrated conservatively to make sure you don't actually run out unexpectedly.

Do they still have reserve tanks? I thought they were done away with years ago.

Can't remember which but it was the 4.0 v8 turbo diesel or similar, London-Edinburgh and back.

"Ronny" wrote

Whoa! Brave man. I once went about 20 miles past "0" and chickened out after that, but that was on a B5 1.8Tq.

FYI... it's not good for your fuel pump to be running on "fumes."

Cheers,

Pete

hehe, once won't hurt it I'm sure :)

I just done another 20 miles and its still going fine, you know when its getting low as the fuel pump does make some funny noises, my B5 2.6 quattro would not go very far after it read 0 but this one seems to have >2 gallons spare which is nearly 20% of the cars capacity :(

You could plug in VAG-COM and have a look at the measuring block for fuel. It tells you in litres how much fuel is in the tank. I haven't check it when the fuel light comes on but it is something that can be 'adapted' to your individual needs (or at least on the B5 it's possible).

Richard

The quattros don't have a reserve tank as such. It's an upside down 'U' shape with a pump to transfer the fuel to the side where the fuel pump is. This is to allow for the rear offside driveshaft. At least that's the way it is on the B5 A4.

Richard

Plug in what? Sounds rather intriguing...

"Jim Pills" wrote

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Cheers,

Pete

It only takes one time, for your fuel pump to stop working :-) It happened to me, it can happen to you. Now I never let it get into the red, not worth spending USD150 on a new fuel pump just to be lazy.

Why would a fuel pump stop working if it sucked fumes or nothing at all? Are they "lubricated" by the fuel running through them?

-al

It happened to me, I had a new fuel pump about 6 months ago, the B6 had fuel pump issues anyway :(

"Alan Sung" wrote

The pump is cooled by the fuel in the tank.

Cheers,

Pete

I typically will fill up when the light comes on, just above 'E'. At that point, it will take something like 14 - 14.5 gallons, meaning there is between 2 and 2.5 gallons left in the tank (16.6 gallon tank). The most I ever put in was 15.1 gallons, and the needle was hard up against 'E' for quite a while.

Dan D '04 A4 1.8Tq MT-6 Central NJ USA

Just for your info, I filled up last week and it cost me ....... £62.00 this is the most I have ever put in and that's over $100 :))) 02 A4 1.8Tq

Ha! I regularly get more than £70 worth in mine!

It's just plain wrong isn't it :(

The most I ever put in was 15.6 gallons in my 98.5 A4 2.8Q, and I really didn't intend to go that long, I just couldn't get to a gas station sooner.

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