Fuel Gauge Question

[rick52]

The fuel gauge is just the tip of the “it sucks” iceberg. All the bells and whistles with no way to control them. I get in the truck, put on my seat belt and start the truck. I then get a display showing I am the sole occupant and that I have my seat belt on. It then requires me to click “ok” to acknowledge I have my seat belt on. WTF!!! Clearly designed by Ford lawyers.

Sponsored

 

[Tunnelman]

My wife doesn't use the gas gauge, she uses the miles to empty. I'll how much is in it, she always responds the miles to empty number. If it works for her it works better for me.

 

[HeyBales]

Yeah, the fuel gage is the suckiest suck that ever sucked. It would be a deal breaker if not for the Miles to Empty reading.

The cluster design in general is bad, lots of wasted space. My pet peeve is the small little vertical bar that is shown for the Power %. The total available bar height is like 3" but the power % never exceeds like 1/2", there are no graduation dash marks, etc.

Yikes - didn't realize no hashes appeared or % when in use.

Even the pre-25 design left plenty of space on the screen though. Especially when 10% max EV power was a limit to attempt to stay under, but get close to.

I wish the speedo would give some 5 mph increments instead of 140 mph - but I've observed thru the logs they have 3 different readings for speed that rarely match to 1 mph - so perhaps that's why.

 

[Backin15]

The fuel gauge is just the tip of the “it sucks” iceberg. All the bells and whistles with no way to control them. I get in the truck, put on my seat belt and start the truck. I then get a display showing I am the sole occupant and that I have my seat belt on. It then requires me to click “ok” to acknowledge I have my seat belt on. WTF!!! Clearly designed by Ford lawyers.

Thanks to another user I found out you need to buckle all 3 rear seatbelts and that annoying seatbelt screen will be gone.

 

[El Kabong]

I get in the truck, put on my seat belt and start the truck. I then get a display showing I am the sole occupant and that I have my seat belt on. It then requires me to click “ok” to acknowledge I have my seat belt on. WTF!!! Clearly designed by Ford lawyers.

A tip I found here is to put dummy latches into the rear set belt buckles. Since the rear seats don't have occupancy sensors, they will always pull up that belt minder screen (which does go away after half a minute). Putting in the dummy latches will solve this as long as you buckle up before starting the vehicle.

Since I have a dog platform back there no one uses the rear seats anyway.

 

[Maverick123]

... Since the rear seats don't have occupancy sensors ...

They do have sensors

On mine it'll sometimes throw the red "unbelted" icon for the middle seat if both outside seats are occupied and belted. I'm guessing the middle pressure sensor gets triggered by the fabric being pulled tight

 

[Glen Baker LLC]

The fuel gauge is just the tip of the “it sucks” iceberg. All the bells and whistles with no way to control them. I get in the truck, put on my seat belt and start the truck. I then get a display showing I am the sole occupant and that I have my seat belt on. It then requires me to click “ok” to acknowledge I have my seat belt on. WTF!!! Clearly designed by Ford lawyers.

What happens if you don't push the OK button?
My dashboard notice goes away after 60 Seconds.

 

[HeyBales]

They do have sensors

On mine it'll sometimes throw the red "unbelted" icon for the middle seat if both outside seats are occupied and belted. I'm guessing the middle pressure sensor gets triggered by the fabric being pulled tight

Posts by drivers of all the trims have shown they don't.
This was searching for the wires of such sensors.

Left rear passenger belted the middle latch accidentally then moved it over.
That left the system thinking there was middle passenger that unbuckled.
Open and close a rear door - resolves the problem because the "passenger" got out.

ETA: And since the beeping at that point can get annoying - can even do that door while moving if needed. Safety first!

 

[Larrythelunatic]

Over the weekend I installed an Amazon-purchased AGM battery under the rear seat. Before doing so, I connected my smart trickle charger under the hood. An attempt to retain memory in whatever parts required it. (Back when, that was just the radio presets.)
Changed the battery, removed the charger, did the high beams/brake lights routine, and let it sit for 24 hrs.
But a connection must have been momentarily interrupted, because when
next I used the truck, radio presets were retained, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for my cycle-through displays on the dash.
I was missing one of my trip odometer readouts, and had acquired the seat belt reminder screen, about which I had heard so much over the last 4.5 years.
Since it had been 4+ years since I had chosen which screens to display, I needed to re-acquaint myself with the various options available.
I can see where that seatbelt screen could be rather annoying.
So……..Get rid of it!
Easy enough to do with the steering wheel buttons.

 

[El Kabong]

smart trickle charger

Will probably not deliver any current to an open circuit. The old trick was to connect a fresh 9v battery in parallel to the 12v before removing and replacing the 12v battery, but I have not tried that on any modern car.

No surprise the radio presets were retained as the radio has an operating system similar to your phone and should be storing the preset information on an internal flash drive (so, a non-volatile storage media).

 

[Glen Baker LLC]

.

 

[El Kabong]

.

Well, yes, but nowadays the 12v outlets are usually behind a relay and thus disconnected when the vehicle is off.

Somewhere in my vast Piles of Electronics Crap I have a homemade version of this, but it's been years since I used it:

 

[tiktokbrainrot]

Exactly. This is progressive engineering gone bad. The original fuel gauge was fine and was easy to read. Why Ford decided to "fix" it is beyond comprehension.

When you look at the Escape, which uses the same system but has way more going on, you see why they "fixed" it. The Escape looks a lot better (gauge still sucks) and just....didnt bother porting it to the Mav, despite running the same architecture.

They still treat cars like silo'd applications and not like items that share parts and run the same OS. There's really no reason any of these cars should be missing digital display features other models have.

 

[Backin15]

The last two times I changed batteries I used the battery out of my lawn mower and connected to ground and the positive battery post or charging lug with jumper cables. Worked great!

 

[EffNo50]

The fuel gauge is just the tip of the “it sucks” iceberg. All the bells and whistles with no way to control them. I get in the truck, put on my seat belt and start the truck. I then get a display showing I am the sole occupant and that I have my seat belt on. It then requires me to click “ok” to acknowledge I have my seat belt on. WTF!!! Clearly designed by Ford lawyers.

buckle the rear seat belts. No need on the front passenger seat unless it's occupied. It has a presence sensor, but the rear seat does not.

Sponsored