I recently bought my first car, a 98' Cherokee Limited and from the first time I drove the car 200 miles home, I noticed the gas gauge was off. When I filled her up for the first time, I immediately noticed that the gauge went way quite a bit past F. It was also surprising that when i got home, it was only at a little under 3/4th of a tank. 200 miles on a theoretical 1/4 tank? seemed absurd.

I then fixed some other stuff on my XJ after it overheated due to my error (long story). When I finally started daily driving it, I noticed that the gas mileage was horrible, and still is today.

I understand this isn't a prius, but from home to school and back (12 miles round trip), I used a little over one whole notch to the next on the fuel gauge, which seemed peculiar.

Later I noticed that when I'm on half a tank on the gauge, my overhead console says DTE: 100 miles, meaning that my tank is only estimated to get 200 miles? Bone stock, seems weird.

Does DTE mean until 0 gallons or is there still something left after it says 0 (I have not dared to try.)

Is there anything I can check/fix/replace that might correct my gauge, and anything that might cause this problem.

My Fuel injectors/Rail are sort of rusty would that be it?

 

usually it is the sending unit (in the gas tank, which must be dropped), but check all the wiring going into the tank for cracks, bad grounds etc. There have been a number of threads on this, try the search function for more info.

 

Mine is an older unit and although it sort of works it is hardly accurate. Mine drops 3/4ths of a tank after about 20 miles and by the time I get to a quarter of a tank I have 10 gallons left. When I am on empty I still have 5 gallons left. Its a pain.

 

I fixed this today on mine, you can adjust the board that has the potentiometer for the float back and forth. Also, I found mine read more accurately when I cleaned the contacts and rebent the conductor arms for more pressure on the board.

Mines a 96 and I didn't have to drop the tank to do it, I just pulled it out from behind the pumpkin.