Odd thing happened on my first commute in my geriatric X350. When I put some petrol in yesterday the gauge went to around 2/3 full and read just the same this morning. But as I drove to work it went down so fast I thought I had a fuel leak. The range display was also going down alarmingly fast (since it’s based on the tank reading).
However, when I got back into the car after work the gauge reading had gone back up to where I would expect it to be.
My initial guess is that perhaps the sender is ‘sticky’ and going over the inevitable lumps and bumps it went down but was slow to come back up again. Does that make sense?
Mine was/is sometimes like yours. When bought, the tank was almost empty
and I filled it right up. The gauge went way past full and was almost
pointing at the pump symbol.
Later it has twice read empty, although I knew it was almost full, but
after stopping and restarting it showed the correct level.
Also, it would sometimes be simply an erratic reading between 3/4 and
1/2 full on consecutive short journeys.
The tank has two sensors (and therefore twice as likely to play up) and
some software that marries the two together to generate a reading to
display on the gauge.
I think my car was unused for quite some time before I bought it and the
sensors have become tarnished (also known to happen on the X300).
If you hold the Trip Computer button down on the Indicator Stalk whilst
turning the ignition key to position 2, you will get a lot of diagnostic
information displayed about the Instrument Cluster, which, IIRC,
includes the fuel sensor readings.
HTH
Chris C
Justin Hill wrote:
Here is the way Jaguar recommended we diagnose the fault when I worked at the dealer ‘back-in-the-day’.
XJ310-01am Erratic Fuel Gauge Reading.pdf (44.2 KB)
XJ310-03 Fuel Level Sender.pdf (306.7 KB)
bob
Thank guys. I just left it alone and it appears the more driving I do, the less erratic the gauge is. It’s still not right but it’s improving all the time. Perhaps it had become sticky during a period of disuse before I bought the car.