Gas Tank Capacity?

Does anybody know the exact number of gallons that tank in these wagons holds.......I'm going to be changing tanks next week and want to adjust the float to more accurately read......

21 gallons iirc

I googled it and it said the wagons have 21 gallon tank but the sedan is 23 gallon. Odd.

fuel tank and gauge  when mine says 1/2 tank on the gauge about 6 gallon left based on 22 total capacity takes over 300 miles to get there learned to live with it

You can not adjust the float to read more accurately. The system is set up to read the way it does. It will stay on full until the tank is about 1/2 empty. Then it will quickly move toward empty. It is made that way for the perception of gas mileage by the general public. As far as reading the last quarter of a tank, you should keep at least a fourth of a tank of gas in the car, to cover the pump, for cooling purposes. Running the car until it "needs" gas is not an option.

Just learn what the gauge tells you, and compensate for any error. The gauge is just a general reference not an indicator of exactly how much gas is in the tank. If you get anal about the gauge, you will end up frustrated.

You can't adjust the float, but you can add a circuit to make it read more accurately. This was a common mod back in the B body golden era.

You can check on ISSF to find the necessary resistor to make it read more accurately.

My rule of thumb has always been to retain half a tank of fuel for fuel pump cooling......I'm trying to understand how bending the float arm would fail to make the gauge read differently (?) although I DO trust the advice of my friends here as being pretty accurate......

The float arm may not go all the way to the bottom of the tank. Bending it will not necessarily move the sender to a position that will indicate the actual amount in the tank any more accurately than is does now. You also risk making it worse. A resistor in parallel with the sender will make the gauge move less for a given amount of gas. I think the sender resistance range is 0-90 ohms.

Currently, The gauge isn't all the way down to half when I then put 13 or 14 gallons in......I was going to bend the float upward on the arm so that the rheostat would be farther down.....I really prefer a car to show less gas than it has so that there is an ample reserve keeping the pump cool.... I'm taking the tank out anyway, probably to replace it because it leaks......... I'm going to drain the gas into known size cans and compare with the current gauge reading to see where I'm at....

At halfway, it probably has about a quarter of a tank, because the gauge only shows movement when the tank is half empty. The gauge will move rapidly once it hits the center mark. So instead of the mark being half of a tank, consider it a quarter of a tank, and you will be closer to correct. There is no nomenclature on the hash marks, so you can determine what the calibration is.

Since you know how much gas is in the tank when it reaches the center mark, you should be able to determine when you need to fill the tank. Recalibrate your brain, and save yourself a lot of work.

Fred is on the correct mind set, I have tested mine many times 1/2 tank on the gauge get fuel and just get used to it, 6-7 gallons left / like it or not not worth the effort or brain pressure to to change it
still love my wagon 1994 DGGM and I love it

They're 22 gallons according the owner's manual.

From nearly 40 years of driving big rigs, which have cylindrical tanks, I'm well aware that the top half of the fuel shows dropping very slowly, but once past half, the fuel level goes down at an accelerated rate.....Another reason I'm generally looking for fuel when the gauge get down around half....At least most cars, including our wagons, have tanks that maintain approximately the same surface area of the fuel pool from full to empty and what causes slow progress through the center of the gauge is the sweep of the rheostat arm only.....

On the TBI cars, they start stalling in corners (fuel sloshing away from pickup) when there is about 5 gallons left in the tank. Never gotten more than 17.5 gallons into one. Must have fixed on the LT1 cars as I have gotten 21 gallons into my 94 RMW.....(wife drives until E despite me telling her about FP issues, etc).

Same here. Fuel gauge stays on full forever. When it moves, it goes toward empty
Pretty fast. It seems to be pretty acurate close to empty. Low fuel light came on yesterday, took 20 gallons to fill it up. I just set the trip odometer when I fill up.
320 miles on last tank.

Sprocket wrote:

On the TBI cars, they start stalling in corners (fuel sloshing away from pickup) when there is about 5 gallons left in the tank. Never gotten more than 17.5 gallons into one.   Must have fixed on the LT1 cars as I have gotten 21 gallons into my 94 RMW.....(wife drives until E despite me telling her about FP issues, etc).

You need to put an "E" sticker above the center hash mark.

atlantadan wrote:

annapolis wrote:

22 total capacity takes over 300 miles to get there  learned to live with it

Lordy - I sure as hell could "learn to live with" 300 per tank. All city driving, lots of idling in traffic, lots of stoplights. I'm lucky to get 200 a tank.

Atlanta Dan about about 300 to get to were I can stuff 15-16 in the tank mixed driving no complaints been through Atlanta many times fuel mileage is a small distraction in that neighborhood

Soooo........ I just finished putting the replacement tank in the car, as the original DID have a crack about two inches long in the front left outside corner of the locating pocket.....
Anyway, The gauge had shown 3/4 of a tank and I drained 9 gallons out of it........Before loading the module into the replacement tank, I removed the float arm and bent it upward a bit....I can see that now the float hits the vent pipe housing before reaching the top of the rheostat, so it's not going to register beyond full any longer.......I put everything back together, put the 9 gallons back in and ran it....It now shows 1/4 tank with 9 gallons left..... Cool! I can actually run down to 1/4 now without risking the pump!