We bought a great gas saver......FINALLY

[Jay2TheRescue]

Not really. As you go around the corner the fuel sloshes back & forth in the tank. In the 70's & 80's Ford used weaker than normal magnets in the fuel gauge, so the needle was slow to react, and it ended up resting at an average reading of the highs & lows. late model vehicles take a sampling of the highs & lows fed to the gauge unit over a few minutes, and display an average of those readings, so the gauge doesn't really move from going around a corner or up & down hills.

[IndyFetch]

90s Hondas were terrible about this. I could have 3/4 of a tank but have the gauge show empty if I went around an off-ramp too quickly.

[theholycow]

I bet you can buy or make a damping circuit.

You might try replacing the fuel level sender; it may be designed to avoid sudden movements and its motion damping component has failed.

[GasSavers_BEEF]

some of the autocross guys actually put baffles in their gas tanks. their issue is that when they are hard cornering, they can actually lose fuel to the pickup all together. it is a very expensive fix. most guys that experience this once or twice get in the habbit of just topping it off.

it is a fixable problem but not cheaply I don't think.

[civic94]

I have a 97 prizm 3 speed, rated at 22/27. no lockup torque converter, no overdrive, and 60mph was at 3000 rpm. The best i can get was 33 mpg at 60 mph on the scangauge, all highway. it was very bad for the fe compared with the size of the car. 98+ prizms are a little better, they are rated at 30mpg highway for the 3speed auto, so 3mpg better.

[bowtieguy]

his is a 4 speed.
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sending units should be done w/ the pump...easier than most to get to(under rear seat), but the part is expensive. when the time comes, i'd go OEM.

[civic94]

Originally Posted by bowtieguy

his is a 4 speed.
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sending units should be done w/ the pump...easier than most to get to(under rear seat), but the part is expensive. when the time comes, i'd go OEM.

yea i forgot to mention i knew his was a 4 speed. I wished I had the 4 speed on mines, but on the other hand I rarely use it for highway, only once in a blue moon.

[Project84]

Originally Posted by BEEF

some of the autocross guys actually put baffles in their gas tanks. their issue is that when they are hard cornering, they can actually lose fuel to the pickup all together. it is a very expensive fix. most guys that experience this once or twice get in the habbit of just topping it off.

Topping off is best for most any racing application because you don't want 1/2 of a tank of gas being tossed around from side to side adding weight to the cornering of the car and/or as you're suggesting, leaving your pickup with nothing to actually pick-up!

Very common of GM's though to have a floating fuel gauge needle. My Camaro as well as my pickup truck do this, both are Chevrolet.

[theholycow]

In racing, topping off may stabilize the contents but it also adds weight...

[Project84]

As for SOLO II racing, cone race courses in parking lots, what most everyone practices is filling up the tank prior to the race. There are a lot of REALLY hard on the brakes then 90* turns in this type of racing where it would be easy to starve a fuel pump vs. the big sweeping turns of say an HPDE (High Performance Driving Experience) course on a road course like Putnam, Mid-Ohio, Laguna Seca type tracks where they can probably get away with filling up 1/2 a tank.

Even on the national level, the extra weight of 6 or 7 gallons on a Solo II cone track isn't that big of deal. Most people would rather have the confidence of stability vs. the extra .05 second or so benefit of dropping 30 lbs. A lot of competitive racers in Solo II even bring a friend or request people sit in the passenger seat for the races to help balance out the car. You don't see this as much in those who have relocated the battery to the passenger side of the trunk.

I've heard before in drag racing at least, that every 100 lbs you take off the car you gain one-tenth of a second ET. 30 lbs of fuel in a SCCA Solo race where top speeds rarely exceed 70 mph isn't going to be very much difference.