full of fuel

[johhn]

my 4.5 runs more smoothly with a full tank of petrol. any ide why this should be?

[Plotloss]

Enormous amount of liquid damping the vibrations?

Just a guess...

[V8 Archie]

Fuel starvation?

I ran pretty low on Sunday and at one point the car nosedived for no apparent reason just after a corner. I put it down to a load of air rather than fuel being sucked by the fuel pump.

I believe that the pump is gravity fed and that the tank has no baffles (but I could be very wrong about this).

Also, the lower the fuel level is, the more crap you'll be feeding into the engine from the bottom of the tank.

[Plotloss]

Mine as started doing that, scared the life out of me the other day.

[Kevp]

"at one point the car nosedived"

Mine did the same.
I assumed it was the rev limiter cutting in early. But now Im wondering about the fuel level. I just cant recal how much was in it. I was going uphill around a left hand bend.

[V8 Archie]

Plotloss said:

scared the life out of me the other day.

It worried me for a while too, until I came up with an explanation that didn't mean lots of damage to the car (or wallet).

Kevp said:

I was going uphill around a left hand bend.

Mine was just after a left hand bend (at about 60mph) too. Given that the fuel pump is on the left, this explanation makes a lot of sense.

[Plotloss]

Left for me as well...

I thought it was terminal!

[V8 Archie]

Cheers Plotloss and Kevp. It's good to know that my theory appears to hold water.

Note to self: 200 miles on a tank is the absolute tops you should do.

Edited for splingel

>> Edited by V8 Archie on Thursday 25th September 15:55

[Incorrigible]

Its worse down hill on a left hand bend IME, but keeping it above half a tank when giving it Johnny large potatoes seems to do the trick

[V8 Archie]

I haven't had any problem above 1/4 full. Sunday I probably only had 5-10 litres left (1/10th - 1/5th of a tank) which, given the area of the base of the tank means not much depth. Therefore it's not too surprising that it happened.

Incorrigible said:

Its worse down hill on a left hand bend

Sounds like rear left for the pump, then.

[M@H]

I ran mine out the other day... it very graciously dropped to 4 cylinders and coasted me home.. it gave up just as I got to my house..

Matt.

[MajorClanger]

V8 Archie said:

Note to self: 200 miles on a tank is the absolute tops you should do.

Got to 271 on Sunday before we could refill and still reckon we had another 4 litres in the tank (works out about 24 mpg)... all courtesy of slow traffic on A1 and M11 at least the journey the otherway was more interesting a met a very nice Chimaera heading towards Melton Mowbray.

MC

[V8 Archie]

I'm impressed! I'm making an (educated) guess that the tank is 55-60 litres. Sunday I did about 215-230 miles at about 24mpg. The next half tank I got up to 27mpg for 130 miles or so though . And that included some "pushing on" with a Maserati on my tail .

[the dodger]

I drive less smoothly with a full tank of Guiness.

[MikeyT]

M@H said:

I ran mine out the other day... it very graciously dropped to 4 cylinders and coasted me home.. it gave up just as I got to my house.. Matt.

I popped down to Halfwits the other week and ran out on a dual carriageway coming back. No phone, no money, had had the wheel off the Passat fixing something so was covered in grease etc. - old jeans on (had sheet on the seat in the Chim) - had to walk a mile through one of the roughest parts of town (so didn't look out of place ) to get to a phone box where I had to reverse the charges and the missus brought some petrol out.

Then I had to walk back.