Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Its been a good few years since i owned an 'older' car.

I took the 944 turbo out tonight and noticed the fuel gauge was just above the red.
I took the car to the filling station and put in £30 worth of standard fuel - so just under 30 litres?

The car then showed the tank was 3/4 full. But after going around a few bends i would somtimes see 1/2 tank and sometimes 3/4 of a tank.

Is this normal 944 behaviour or is my sender duff?

My 968 gauge is similar and so I tend to use it as a guide rather than a gauge

I have read somewhere that the shaft that the float slides up and down on can get sticky with age, but I have never got around to venturing in to the top of the fuel tank to investigate.

They are a bit variable!
If it helps I get around 200 miles from £40 of fuel. It takes the gauge from light on to half full.
So I suppose £80 would go 400 or so which sounds about right.

mine can be a bit random as well, can vary by 1/4 tank depending on if i'm turning left or right

Mine is similar, biggest variation takes place going up and down hills

Is this because of the shape of the tank?

Are there any known cures? or should i just get used to the fact that its a 23 year old car?

Hi,

I've learned to live with the tank level variance. If you're parked on an incline, it can show you have more or less fuel in the tank. I always try to remember that the gauge is just an indicator of tank contents and don't rely on it for an exact level.

When the fuel light comes on, you have around 8 litres left in the reserve tank. I make sure that I fill up within 30 miles after the light comes on to be on the safe side. When completely filled, my gauge never reads right up to the top. It doesn't budge for a good 70 miles and slowly comes down to 1/2 way (around 200 miles). Then from 1/2 to 1/4 it seems to go down very quickly. After the 1/4 tank mark, the level goes steadily down until the reserve tank light comes on. I can normally get around 370 - 400 miles on a tank but that all comes down to how much clog you give the loud pedal .

Another small tip, don't use supermarket fuel unless its TESCO 99. I found my '44 runs crap on the normal 95 RON stuff. Once I changed to a higher RON grade of fuel, the car runs much smoother after a couple of tanks of the good stuff. I've only seen a very marginal increase in fuel economy, maybe 1 mpg, though.

Ben

+1

My S2 fule gauge is pretty accurate but the 924S has always acted strange, I use the gauge on that only to tell me it is on reserve and tend to drive that by mileage using the trip meter. I did remove and clean the sender unit on the 924S and that made very little difference, probably just worn out.

Rav,

Looks like we're all in the same boat, so you could be the first to try a new sender and then report back to the rest of us
If it works we can all change ours too!

My car goes to Steve Bull specialist cars this weekend. I will ask him his thoughts and report back.

I'm going to Steve's on Monday - might need a new clutch
I shall be nosey!!

Clean the contacts. It worked for me!

The fuel level sender on my 944 had completely rusted inside due to the maze at the bottom being blocked and sitting still for 8 years with no petrol inside it.

I found out that you can unscrew the bottom, dismantle it and give it a good clean up but just be very careful with the wires inside. Mine was however completely shot so waiting on another to arrive from ebay which I will dismantle and clean up.

Not sure if the newer version with the plastic screw top works in the same way, mine is the old 924 style with the hex bolts in the top.

As a point of reference I cleaned the contacts (the multi plug items and the oval pieces) on my dash as the temp and fuel gauge had a mind of their own (the temp gauge was fine, but would from time to time waver about and then sometimes max itself out until I tapped the dash, the fuel gauge would either register and flicker about its level (and I mean flicker quite a bit) or barely register fuel in the tank (reserve light worked mind you).

Today I put £20 worth of fuel in. From the gauge being on the red line, it went to 1/3 of the way, being slightly closer to the 1/4 mark. Around bends it did move slightly towards the 1/4 but not alot at all.